Polar Vortex Highlights Natural Gas-fired Generation Vulnerabilities

Electric Light and Power ^ | 02/25/2014 | Teresa Hansen

[dickmc]

For many people in the U.S., me included, this winter has been miserable. The polar vortex, which I'm fairly certain was a term only meteorologists had heard before this winter, has wreaked havoc in much of the country. ... This type of weather affects few, if any, industries more than electricity providers.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which is responsible for balancing the state's electricity supply and demand, reported an all-time high winter peak demand Jan. 7 and was required to issue an alert the day before when some 13,000 MW of generation--3,700 MW of forced outages caused by weather--were unavailable from midnight to 8 a.m. ERCOT brought all available electric generation online and deployed all demand response programs that it had contracted. Even with these measures, available generation capacity did not meet demand ...

Other independent system operators such as PJM and MISO experienced problems, too--some because coal plants that were heavily used have been retired. (Their owners can't afford to meet environmental regulations.)...

This brief summary is well worth reading. It appears the grid was in more trouble than commoonly known. There detailed article is here.

A much longer article covering the same thing in the same Magazine with respect to natural gas is is here.

Both are worth reading.

[henkster]

True. I thought Wilkes brought the term with him from Chicago.

[Wuli]

let me see: energy grid companies + risk & cost of possible unusual circumstantes = ???

= normal planning requirements of energy grid companies

yes - the cold did go further south and more often did so, than usual, but its not like it NEVER has, and its not like no one knew that “weather is NOT predictable”, and so, in order to be sure, energy grid providers HAVE to plan on the unexpected

[BigpapaBo]

+1 on what you said.
The idiots are forcing old coal burners offline around here too. With no real plans to replace them. That, and we just permanently shut down a base load nuke (Kewanee).
Gee wunderkind why we have these events. Just wait until the economic slump turns around. Rates will skyrocket, and businesses will choose to move to the cheap energy.

[Huskrrrr]

I’ve have a PhD

“Post Hole Digger”

[cloudmountain]

“Post Hole Digger”

Good one.