The NE ISO Saga Continues; Today Wind Is Huge Issue -- January 16, 2022

Wind is now providing 0.6% of electricity demand. 0.6%. That's less than one percent. 

Finally, this story is all over twitter. I guess folks are starting to read the blog. LOL.  

And, here:

Criminal on two levels:

• burning oil for electricity: that's something only Saudi Arabia and third world countries do; and,
• in the process, sky-high prices for their residents -- especially the poor.

Of course, this will all be "made up" when we get back to nice weather. 

Link here.

Most surprising, wind:

• yesterday, of the renewable sources, wind account for 59% of supply;
• today, of the renewable source, wind is accounting for only 7% of supply.
• have operators stopped turning turbines due to severe weather storm?

From a reader:

You are correct in noting the (lack of) wind contributing to $275/$280 per Mwh spot pricing early this morning. 

Specifically, the wind produced almost 1,000 Mw last night at 7 PM (local time). 

At noon, output was 71 Megawatts ... a drop of over 900 Megawatts. This is nearly the output of one nuclear plant. This large wind drop off is not at all an unusual event.

The fact that the temperature was below 10 degrees meant very little natural gas was available for electricity generation. 

(Natural gas: the offshore FSRU continues to regasify Trinidadian LNG and inject it into the pipeline system.)

Burning expensive fuel oil (over 3,600 Mw at one point) is the result.