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Germany saw a huge increase in reliability over the past decade as it increased its renewable percentages. Old-timers said that anything above 5% renewable would cause grid collapse, then kept on shifting up the percentage as renewables increased on the grid and no disasters happened.

It does require running the grid differently. But part of that is becoming more responsive to constantly changing conditions, and a grid that it used to that will have far fewer problems then one where a GW reactor trips off because of some sensor problem (as happened in Texas). As we get closer to 80% renewable grids, then we will be used to running backup natural gas plants to keep everything running. And the ultimate in resilience and reliability will happen as we add more storage. With batteries everywhere, we will have buffering all over the grid that will make it far far easier to make sure everybody has power, and to limit outages to the smallest areas possible.

The first year of power shut offs for PG&E's public safety in the face of high wind and fire conditions covered massive areas. This last year they covered far less, as they could focus the power shut offs far better with an extra year of work. This sort of finer grained granularity and control is what happens as more renewables and storage will be added to the grid, as we update this impressive machine that we started building a century ago. Adding modern communication and control will come along with more storage, demand response, and home-to-grid power from solar.




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