Pages

Friday, February 5, 2021

Did "They" Run Out Of Oil In New England?-- February 5, 2021

Charts like these suggest New England ran out of oil. Are they burning coal to keep the grid from crashing, but not burning coal?

Prices spiked to $150 / MWh and pretty much stayed there all day:

6 comments:

  1. is it possible that the power plants that could burn oil are due-fuel and can also burn natgas? (i know New York City had some duel-fuel oil plants but im not sure what the alternate fuel is in that case. its probably not coal)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You may be correct; I had simply not noticed that before. I normally see 5% oil before I start seeing coal. It's unimportant, just a trivial observation.

      Delete
  2. per my earlier comment. see this article from a couple years ago.
    https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/ggt2tesxwkjjn6ywbogcng2

    Note that a lot of the plants were described as switching from natgas->oil becuase gas was in short supply. Maybe there's enough supply to keep burning natgas (although New England is awful about new pipelines, there has been *some* construction since 2018)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow, what a great article from the "archives" -- 2018 --. Thank you for finding that. Very, very interesting. And despite that, still not a lot of interest in building more natural gas pipelines. I find all of this so fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to look this up and then taking the time to write me, much appreciated.

      Delete
  3. Pipeline constraints is the problem. Take a look at the NEISO for July 19th 2020, demand was 22500 MW, NG generated 13000MW for a cost of ~$30/MW.

    Yesterday demand at 10am was 16300, cost of `$150/MW due to fuel cost.

    NG, $2.86/MMbtu, heating oil $1.71/gallon. Takes about 7 gallons of oil for 1MMbtu.
    About $12 for the same heat using oil, vs. $2.86 for NG.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To see the other end of the spectrum:

      http://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2021/02/fascinating-when-hydro-isnt-needed-iso.html.

      When demand plummets (weekends), the price of electricity trends toward $0.00.

      Delete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.