The challenge of part-time power production

In an effort to cut carbon emissions, more and more of the electricity we use is being produced by the wind and sun. In the PJM Interconnection, the 13-state grid that includes Pennsylvania, wind and solar production grew from 4.1% in 2021 to 5.7% in 2024, according to preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration. And various state and federal policies want to push that number up to 50% or more in the years ahead. At a time of growing electric demand, nearly all the new power plants proposed for PJM are wind and solar.

 But the sun sets at night, and the wind doesn’t always blow.

 What are the challenges of trying to run a round-the-clock business with part-time help? Few of us have ever faced the complexity of running an electrical grid, but most of us have been to a diner before…

Imagine you’re the manager of an all-night diner, the kind with a counter up front where customers can watch the kitchen work and hot black coffee fills heavy white mugs. You serve up simple food at affordable prices, at all hours of the day and night. Each day, every day.

Let’s call it the Watt’s Up Café.

You have a reliable work force waiting tables and cooking in the back, enough for three eight-hour shifts every day. Enough workers that you can plan around vacation schedules and the occasional sick day. Enough so you can cover operations even if someone unexpectedly falls ill for weeks or months at a time.

Then the government steps in with a new requirement: Not enough people have jobs, it decrees, so the Watt’s Up Café has to hire a new crew of part-time workers. It starts with a requirement for 10% of the workforce, then creeps up to 20% and 30%. And these are special part-time workers.

They keep their own schedule and don’t show up reliably. Sometimes they let you know ahead of time they won’t be showing up. Sometimes they don’t. And often they’ll simply leave in the middle of a shift, even when customers are filing through the door and filling every seat.

But you can’t fire them. You must let them work, and pay them, whenever they’re willing to show up. And if you have too many workers on any one shift, you have to send home some of your full-time reliable employees.

Don’t worry, says the government: This new system will make it cheaper to operate your diner and it’s better for everyone.

Those part-timers keep assuring you that they’ll find other workers to fill in their shifts when they don’t want to work. But somehow, that promise is never kept.

Now you’re facing new problems. Some of your fulltime workers quit, unable to make enough money when their hours are being cut, creating more gaps for you to fill.

Soon you’re looking at two different solutions.

You need to keep an entire separate workforce on salary, ready to staff the entire diner at a moment’s notice, paying them their full wage to be on standby. If not, they will retire or otherwise leave the business.

Or, when you find yourself short-staffed, you need to reach out and recruit workers to come to the Watt’s Up Café right now, paying them whatever it takes – even thousands of dollars an hour – to get them to drop everything and come work immediately.

Of course, other diners across the city are facing the same challenge, because they also have a part-time workforce dictated by the government. And their part-time workers tend to skip work at the same time yours do.

But don’t worry, says the government: This new system will make it cheaper to operate your diner and it’s better for everyone.

Menu prices go up to cover the new workforce costs and you’re spending all your time juggling the staffing schedule hoping you have enough people at exactly the right time.

But sometimes your best efforts aren’t good enough. So, lines get long. And when a customer finally gets seated, they have an excruciating wait for their food to arrive.

And sometimes, when things are bad enough, people just can’t get any food no matter how hungry they are.

So, the next time PJM issues a statement like:

Renewable resources are not able to provide some of the same physical properties on the grid that thermal resources can provide. In addition, renewable resources cannot always be called upon to produce power. That means that renewable resources won’t be a one-to-one replacement to these thermal units that produce power on demand.

 Just remember the Watt’s Up Café.

Ken Zapinski is director of research and public policy at Pittsburgh Works Together, a business-organized labor alliance working on creating economic opportunities for all Pennsylvanians.

 The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the preceding commentary are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Central Penn Business Journal or its editors. Neither author nor CPBJ guarantees the accuracy or completeness of any information published herein.