On Tuesday last week, Taiwan faced a power outage for almost three hours. Most commentary afterward has focused on capacity margins and whether the nation’s nuclear power plants ought to be brought back online. However, while capacity margin is an important topic, not enough attention has been paid to the crucial point of grid flexibility.
However, first, an engineering explanation of what caused the outage.
The power system operates on a delicate balance between supply and demand over short, medium and long-term timescales. At the shortest timescale, the supply and demand of power are balanced at the seconds-to-minutes duration and set at a frequency of 60Hz in Taiwan. When supply exceeds demand, the frequency rises above the 60Hz level and actions need to be taken to reduce the frequency back to the 60Hz level. The reverse is true when demand exceeds supply. Deviation from 60Hz is allowed within a safety range, but systems are shut off when the frequency falls outside predefined safety boundaries.
Datan Natural Gas Power Plant going offline removed a large chunk of power supply from the grid, causing demand to far exceed supply. This caused grid frequency to drop below the safety limit, leading several assets on the grid to close down and resulting in the blackout. The practice of modulating frequency to remain within safety bounds is known as “frequency regulation.” However, not all assets in the power system are capable of providing this service. Given its short duration (on the order of seconds-to-minutes), frequency regulation requires assets that can ramp up or ramp down quickly in order to meet balancing needs. Examples of these assets include simple-cycle gas turbines, pumped hydroelectric, energy storage, or demand response.
Note that this list does not include nuclear power. So, what is nuclear power’s role in all this and could it have prevented the blackout? In short, the answer is yes.
All generation options (nuclear, coal, gas, wind, solar, etc.) have their merits and faults and should be used in ways that best suit their characteristics. Under a “normal” situation, slow-responding options such as coal and nuclear plants should be used to provide baseload power. Conversely, faster-responding options such as gas plants should be used to provide intermediate and peaking power as the supply and demand of power changes throughout the day.
Unfortunately, Taiwan’s power mix is not “normal.” Due to the government’s nuclear-power-free policy, fast-responding gas capacity (including Datan) is being used to provide baseload power to fill the void left by the removal of nuclear generation. As a result, no spare gas capacity was available to be called upon to quickly fill the gap when Datan went offline.
Looking at absolute numbers, Taiwan has just about enough installed generation capacity to meet summer peak demand even after nuclear generation is removed from the power mix. However, does this mean everything is all right? No, because removal of nuclear power plants has lowered the flexibility of Taiwan’s power grid, meaning that it has a reduced ability to absorb and respond to sudden shocks in the system.
Taiwan must take action to increase the flexibility of its power grid. Not only is it a matter of national security, it is also very much a practical matter as Taiwan aims to increase the share of intermittent renewable energy in its power mix. Flexibility is not a “good to have,” but a “must have.” The variability of wind and solar energy requires a system that can respond to significant amounts of generation going on or offline in a matter of minutes due to cloud cover or a gust of wind.
Taiwan does not have many options on the table. Building additional gas-fired power plants and their associated infrastructure (eg, pipelines, storage tanks) is not a popular option given environmental concerns. Interconnecting to neighboring grids is also not an option, as connecting to a nearby grid would be very expensive; not to mention that the closest grid to Taiwan is China’s, which is a no-go for obvious security and political reasons.
This leaves energy storage and demand response. Implementing demand response would require large industrial users to reduce their power needs in exchange for a payment from the government. In addition to budgetary concerns, this might disrupt production patterns at Taiwan’s largest manufacturers and result in further economic harm.
Energy storage is an option that has been under-explored thus far. Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) has said that he would be in touch with Tesla to see if its technology could help. Storage technologies such as lithium-ion batteries are indeed well-suited for frequency regulation and, if deployed appropriately, could provide the flexibility Taiwan’s grid needs as the nation transitions toward a “greener” future.
Jerry Hsiao is an assistant professor at the University of Macau’s Faculty of Law. The views expressed are his own.
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