In This Episode
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Host: Todd Snitchler, President and CEO, Electric Power Supply Association
Guest: Mark C. Christie, Commissioner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
In September’s episode of Energy Solutions, EPSA CEO Todd Snitchler sits down with Mark Christie, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to debrief this summer’s reliability challenges and discuss FERC’s views of the state of energy today. Christie, as an influential voice within the Commission, shares his two main focuses: cost and reliability, and emphasizes the need for dispatchable generation that keeps the lights on regardless of changing weather or demand spikes.
“We are reaching a reliability crisis… Any engineer… will tell you that to keep the lights on, on a 24/7, 365-day basis,… you absolutely have to have what is called dispatchable generation… You cannot run a system strictly on intermittents. There’s a role for intermittents… This is not anti-wind or anti-solar. It’s just a position that we have to deal with reality, and you have to have a mix in your system of dispatchable resources as well as intermittents.”
Commissioner Mark Christie, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
To read the transcript, click here.
Highlights
1:17 | Comm. Christie’s Main Concerns
7:23 | Electrification, Demand, and Extreme Weather
12:12 | Reserve Margin and Dispatchable Generation
16:08 | Tension Between State Policy & Federal Regulation
20:03 | How FERC Balances Reliability and the Energy Transition
26:51 | Rational Middle as Approach to the Energy Transition
29:51 | The Biggest Challenge Facing the American Power Grid Today: Reliability
32:07 | The Solution to the Reliability Problem: Baseload Generation
33:13 | Optimism: The Rise of New Technologies Such as SMRs
Production
Producer, Audio Editor: Christina Nyquist, communications director, Electric Power Supply Association
Production Associate: Frances Owen, communications associate, Electric Power Supply Association
