And Now We Wait For The Power Outages; A Bit Of Commentary Regarding ISO NE -- January 29, 2022

Later, 9:45 p.m. CT: telephone call from friend in Boston. The storm is over; it was hardly a storm. A dusting is about all there was for Boston.

Power outage risks, Saturday, January 29, 2022, 7:42 p.m. CT -- right up the eastern seaboard, New England:

Right now, Saturday afternoon, 5:52 p.m. ET:

• demand: 18,144 MW; moderately high; nowhere near a record
  
• oil is now contributing more than nuclear power, and is double what renewables are providing:
• it looks like the region has run out of coal, or the plants are down for other reasons, but not using their least expensive, option, coal;
• hydro only at 6%; very expensive option;
• this helps explain why Senator Elizabeth Warren keeps bringing up other issues to try to keep folks from seeing this -- but they will see it in their utility bills;
• this is a much bigger issue than college tuition debt;

Earlier today:

Additional commentary:

1.) The single remaining coal burner - Merrimack, capacity 415 megawatts - has intermittently shut down/operated at 108 Mw output over the past few weeks. Whether this 60-year-old plant has operational issues or is fuel constrained, I do not know.

2.) Interestingly, the Millstone 2 nuke plant (~1,000 Mw capacity) has been offline for a week due to a leaking pump.  Back online now. [That explains the earlier fuel mix graphic at this post.]

3.) That regular surge in hydro is undoubtedly coming from the Northfield Mountain project which is a pumped storage system. This plant can produce ~ 800/1,000 megawatts every 24 hours, BUT it was originally conceived when obtaining cheap, overnight electricity from the nearby Vermont Yankee nuke plant was available. As Vermont Yankee is now closed, the Northfield Mountain folks are compelled to buy market priced, overnight electricity. This explains why the heretofore cheap overnight electricity prices remain at nose bleed levels. (Supposedly, the net output - economically -  from Northfield is now less than the current electricity production which is fed in at the morning and evening 'rush hour' demand times.)

4.) Regarding the natural gas supply, the FSRU Exemplar is coming up to its fourth week of injecting natgas into the system via the Northeast Gateway Port just offshore Boston. Sourced from Trinidad. This is about the limits of its carrying LNG capacity (based upon the January, 2019 injection history) and I do not know if a replacement FSRU is scheduled to replace it. The company Excelerate owns/operates the Northeast Port and has about a dozen FSRUs worldwide. Replacing that FSRU appears to be absolutely  crucial to maintaining New England's already precarious power situation these next 5/6 weeks.

5.) The site marinetraffic.com is a real time, global trafficking site for worldwide shipping ... an incredible site for the maritime junkies amongst us. The size of the non stop armada of ships delivering expensive fuel oil to New England is simply breath taking. This directly leads to ...

6.) Setting aside all the eye glazing economic components of the ISO/Regular Folks' monthly electricity billings, that constant $160/$200 per Megawatt hour wholesale price we keep seeing will manifest in about 5 month's time in New Englanders' electric bills. 

For rough context, a mere 10 months ago - March, 2021 - the average wholesale electricity price was ~$16/Mwh. With pricing currently, consistently  at 10 times that level,  those poor folks will see absolutely crushing electricity pricing in a few month's time. AND they will still be fortunate IF they have not had blackouts. (See FSRU status for the supply of critically needed natgas).

With all this drama (I picture ISO head van Welie acting like the Lloyd Bridges character in the movie 'Airplane'), New England is facing 2 to 3 more winters - minimum -  of these conditions as lead times for any workable 'solutions'  take just that long. 

Compounding all this self-induced idiocy, there currently  exists NO viable, mid term pathway to alleviate this situation as the huge, power-sustaining LNG terminal at Everett is scheduled to be shut down in 2024.

Simply fascinating- albeit morbidly  so - to observe so many intelligent, concerned people hurtle headlong into a self destructing situation.

And, one more observation:

Brief mention of the availability of natgas and Boston's temperature ... 

When you noted the changing percentage/usage of the natgas component in New England's electricity generation, just Google 'Boston temperature' and you will find a 100% correlation between coldness and natgas availability for power burn. 

This is identical to South Australia's electricity prices and the contemporaneous  temperature and wind speed.