Dive Brief:
- PJM Interconnection will have more than enough power to meet winter demand across 13 states and the District of Columbia, the grid operator said last week, in part because of reinforced generator preparedness and improved coordination.
- Despite predictions for a mild winter, PJM said it is prepared for prolonged cold snaps and is continuing to test equipment and procedures; the grid operator anticipates having almost 178,000 MW of capacity available to meet forecasted demand of roughly 132,000 MW.
- Around the country, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts heating degree days to be about 8% lower than last winter, with reduced heating demand contributing to a 1.6% drop in retail power sales.
Dive Insight:
After two brutal winters that led PJM to revamp its capacity auctions, the largest grid operator is ready to test its cold-weather preparedness. But it probably won't have to.
The EIA is predicting consumption this winter to fall about 1.6%, largely due to warmer weather, with significantly fewer heating degree days expected compared to the 2014-2015 winter. While PJM says it is prepared for the challenge, it appears to have more than sufficient reserves online.
“PJM has taken many steps to reinforce generator readiness and to continue to improve coordination with natural gas pipelines, a key source for a large portion of the generation fleet,” Mike Kormos, executive vice president and chief operations officer for PJM, said in a statement.
PJM said it anticipates having 177,628 MW of electric capacity resources available to meet the forecasted demand of 131,720 MW. And that total does not include the expected reduction from demand response, the operator added.
For comparison, the 2014-15 winter peak use of electricity was 143,295 MW.
PJM proposed new performance standards following poor generator performance during the polar vortex of the 2013-2014 winter, where at one point more than 20% of generation was unavailable. Federal regulators in June approved PJM's plan, so the new procedures can be incorporated into acquiring resources for 2018-2019 delivery.
"Communication and coordination between the natural gas and electric industries continues throughout the year and more frequently through the winter season," the grid operator said. Last month, PJM and pipeline companies exchanged information relative to the upcoming expected winter operations. Beginning this month, the grid operator will hold daily calls with pipeline operators to discuss outages and the state of the gas and electric distribution systems.
In preparation for this winter, PJM said it studied the impact of higher load levels, higher generator outage rates as well as a combination of these scenarios and their impacts on the power system. the grid operator also analyzed the impact on the transmission system of severe gas availability issues that can affect generator availability.
The goal is to ensure each generator in the PJM area has ample fuel supplies and can respond when called upon to disptach, Kormos said at a recent conference.
“We’ve taken some actions we hope that have at least pointed us in the right direction to ensure that not just baseload has firm supply, but every unit out there that we are depending on for capacity,” he told an audience at an annual meeting of U.S. utility regulators last week.
