Much of the country continues to face record-low temperatures, and the possibility is looming for even more snow this weekend. What lessons can we take from this storm, and how might we shore up the grid to cope with extreme weather?
Living in New Jersey, I have the honor of being one of the roughly 67 million Americans covered by the PJM Interconnection.
So I was in the thick of things this weekend, when PJM saw unplanned outages of over 20 gigawatts on Sunday during the height of the storm. (That’s about 16% of the grid’s demand that afternoon.) Other plants were able to make up the difference, and thankfully, the power didn’t go out in my area. But that’s a lot of capacity offline.
Typically, the grid operator doesn’t announce details about why an outage occurs until later. But analysts at Energy Innovation, a policy and research firm specializing in energy and climate, went digging. By examining publicly available grid mix data (a breakdown of what types of power plants are supplying the grid), the team came to a big conclusion: Fossil fuels failed during the storm.
The analysts found that gas-fired power plants were producing about 10 gigawatts less power on Sunday than the peak demand on Saturday, even while electricity prices were high. Coal- and oil-burning plants were down too. Because these plants weren’t operating, even when high prices would make it quite lucrative, they were likely a significant part of the problem, says Michelle Solomon, a manager in the electricity program at Energy Innovation.
PJM plans to share more details about the outages at an upcoming committee meeting once the cold snap passes, Dan Lockwood, a PJM spokesperson, told me via email.