New England Running Out Of Natural Gas? Teslas Being Re-Charged With Electricity Generated By Oil And Natural Gas! Go Greta! January 15, 2022

Link here. And they are finally reading the blog. LOL.

Until told differently I can only interpret these graphs one way.

First of all, electricity demand is not particularly "huge" in New England at the moment, certainly very, very manageable. 

But look at the fuel mix:

• natural gas use has plummeted; dropping being the nuclear component, something I have not seen before in this setting;
  
• burning oil has surged; now accounting for 20% of the mix;
• at 20%, I believe this is the all-time high;
  
• of course, nuclear energy is flat-lined at max available:
• coal is a significant player, at 4%;
  

As noted, unless someone can tell me differently, this suggests that:

• New England is literally running out of natural gas;
• they can't get any more out of nuclear (SOP);
• they can't afford to make up the difference with Canadian hydroelectricity (very expensive);
• so, they go to oil (from Russia, Trinidad, Tobago); and,
• it appears they are either running out of coal, or more likely, the coal burning plants are simply nearing max capacity

But I'm certainly open to other explanations, but that fall off natural gas is eye-opening.

By the way, this explains why those on the east coast are "banning" new natural gas hook-ups. There simply won't be enough natural gas available unless pipeline policies change. 

Not gonna happen in my lifetime.

By the way, folks are starting to notice that the front pages of the likes of the NYT no longer carry stories on global warming / climate change. 

The best things about these graphs: we will see what the max is for:

• nuclear (already knew)
• oil (a function of power plant capacity and how fast tankers in port can off load oil)
• coal ( a function of power capacity and coal stored on site; with rail replenishment)
• renewable: over time, perhaps a year's worth of data, we will get a feeling for renewable energy production vs nameplate capacity 

For the record (I think a reader has better data points than I do on this one), max capacity, all numbers rounded and rounded slightly higher. I have no idea how accurate these are but they will provide me a baseline from which to start:

• current demand: 15,236 MW; $141.21 / MW 
• fuel mix
  
• coal: 400 MW
• hydro: 1,000 MW (today's max: 750 MW)
• oil: 2,600 MW
• nuclear: 3,350 MW
• renewables: 2,000 MW
• natural gas, so far today: 4,200 MW

Wow, it would be interesting to see the nameplate capacity of the entire system by fuel mix.

I may have to add a new tag for "Road_To_New_England": "Road_To_Little_Germany." 

**********************************
Later, Same Day, As Demand Increases
During A Developing Storm

Observations:

• since original post (above), demand has remained unchanged (gone from 15,236 MW to 15,952 MW)
• electricity rates have gone from sixth to seventh decile; huge increase
• NE ISO has cut back on Canadian hydro (expensive source) but at tail end one can see that source starting to increase ever so slightly
• huge, huge increase in natural gas; unable to explain how this happened but incredibly interesting;
• the increase in natural gas could be in response to ever-so-slight decrease in renewable energy;
• but look at that increase in oil use
• is the sharp increase in natural gas and oil "anticipating" greater demand yet to come this afternoon / evening?

• current demand: 15,952 MW; $172.37 / MW 
• fuel mix
  
• coal: 400 MW
• hydro: 600 MW (today's max: 750 MW) -- notice how it has come down significantly;
  
• oil: 2,800 MW
• nuclear: 3,350 MW -- unchanged
  
• renewables: 1,890 MW (falling)
  
• natural gas, so far today: 4,200 MW (from a low of 3,100 to a max of 4,200 MW)
• since Canadian hydro has flat-lined since original post, and oil has increased significantly, it suggests the NE ISO has increased due to cost of oil?
  

The reader who keep me "straight and narrow" on ISO NE provided the following:

You have pretty accurately described the power situation in New England and correctly identified many of the ISO site's functions.

Some added info ... 

1. Nuclear maxes at ~3,300 Mw from 3 plants ... 2 units at Millbrook and 1 at Seabrook. Steady Eddie output, with rare plant malfunctions.

Bad storms have occasionally impacted transmission lines just downstream of Seabrook which have temporarily curtailed contributions from this plant.

2. I have seen oil output as high as 2,900+ Mw. There is a dedicated oil burner (Wyman) - capacity ~600 Mw - at Yarmouth, Maine and it seems to get much of its (very) expensive fuel oil from the nearby Irving refinery at St. John, New Brunswick.

The bulk of the remaining oil fueled electricity comes from the dual fuel CCGT plants. I have no more detailed data, however.

3. The highest contribution from natgas that I have seen was ~ 14,800 Mw in the summertime when natgas was both cheap and plentiful.

4. There is now only one remaining coal plant, the 415 Mw plant at Merrimack.

Interestingly, this plant abruptly curtailed output the other night (7 PM sharp) and ran at 108 Mw for several days. Reasons unknown, but it is getting back up to capacity now.

5. The 'Trees and Trash' output (officially labeled Wood and Refuse) is a consistent 650 Mw contributor.

6. The hydro varies with the 'rush hour' demands of AM/PM markets, with  2,000+ Mw being the highest that I have seen.

(I need to learn more about the hardware/infrastructure involved with NE's hydro).

Addendum ...

You can learn an a lot by using the 'Fuel Mix Graph' options.

By clicking (upper left corner) 'Date', tap blank box, choose - for example  - yesterday,  Jan. 14, click 'Include Next Day', tap Apply, and a 2 day chart appears. 

When viewing this, it forcefully validates your claim that NE is 'running out of natgas' as the usage spikes correlate to rush hour demands and the injection (speculative, on my part) from the FSRU (Exemplar) tethered offshore Boston and hooked up to the region's pipeline system via the Northeast Gateway Terminal).

If you tap/click the non default data icon -  shown as 3 horizontal lines next to the default chart icon - raw data appears showing the precise Megawatt contribution for each of the 11 fuel sources in running ~10 minute increments. This is a HIGHLY instructive bit of information.  

FWIW, it is not unusual to see the wind contribution fluctuate daily over a 500 Megawatt range. Numerous times it has dropped ~1,000 Megawatts in a 12 hour span.

For context, that equates to regularly losing their coal output (~400 Mw) or one nuke plant (~1,000 Mw) off and on every day.