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.

Better for everyone?

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 even 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.

Two bad options

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

Pretty soon, you’re facing new problems. Some of your full-time 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.

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.

Renewable but not reliable

As our energy grid continues to be taxed by new uses, like AI and data centers, it’s important to listen closely to the language used to describe the renewable, but unreliable, energy sources that are supposed to prop it up. For instance, take this statement from PJM:

“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 [fossil fuel-powered] thermal units that produce power on demand.”

When you hear language like this, just remember Watt’s Up Café.

Ken Zapinski is the director of research and public policy for Pittsburgh Works Together.

First Published: January 15, 2025, 10:30 a.m.