It's not an (isolated) incident, it's fundamental (part of the foundation, a core part of) to energy management. What that means is that the issue is expected; it's always been an issue when dealing with energy and always will be.

I would've said "it's an inherent problem, not just bad luck this time".

I assume it's borrowing language from incidental vs fundamental complexity in programming.

Fundamental is core to the problem, incidental is stuff we add because of our imperfect solutions.