Tag Archives: rotating blackouts

California urges power conservation in heat wave, prices soar

(Reuters) – U.S. power prices for Wednesday jumped as homes and businesses crank up air conditioners to escape another heat wave, prompting the California electric grid operator to urge conservation.

The United States has been beset by extreme weather events this year, including February’s freeze in Texas that knocked out power to millions and record heat in the Pacific Northwest this summer.

High temperatures were expected to reach 102 degrees Fahrenheit (39 degrees Celsius) on Friday in Portland, Oregon, where the normal high is just 80 degrees F (27 C) at this time of year, according to AccuWeather.

Meteorologists also forecast hotter-than-normal weather in Central California, which is used to temperatures over 100 F (38 C).

The California ISO, the grid operator for most of the state, issued a flex alert urging consumers to conserve electricity Wednesday evening to reduce strain on the grid and avoid outages when solar power stops working as the sun goes.

Last August, a heat wave forced California utilities to impose rotating blackouts that left over 400,000 customers without power for up to 2-1/2 hours when supplies ran short.

Next-day power prices for Wednesday more than doubled to $198 per megawatt hour at the Mid Columbia hub in Washington. In 2020, the hub averaged $26.

The California ISO forecast power demand would peak at 41,579 megawatts (MW) on Wednesday before easing to 41,483 MW on Thursday. That is below July 9th’s peak for the year of 43,193 MW and the all-time high of 50,270 MW in July 2006.

One megawatt can power about 200 homes in the summer.

The ISO has said it expects to have about 50,734 MW of supply available this summer, but some of that is solar, which is not available when the sun sets.

The ISO had 14,628 MW of solar capacity in June that produced a record 13,205 MW in May.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Heat wave drives U.S. West power prices to highest since February freeze

(Reuters) – Extreme heat expected to blanket the U.S. West next week caused power prices for Monday to soar to their highest since the February freeze when natural gas pipelines and wind turbines froze in Texas leaving millions without power.

High temperatures will reach the low 90s F (about 34 C) in Los Angeles on Monday-Wednesday, which is about 20 degrees higher than the city’s normal high for this time of year, according to AccuWeather forecasts.

Last summer, a heat wave in August forced California utilities to impose rotating blackouts that left over 400,000 homes and businesses without power for up to 2-1/2 hours when energy supplies ran short.

The group responsible for North American electric reliability has already warned that California is the U.S. region most at risk of power shortages this summer because the state increasingly relies on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar, and as climate change causes more extreme heat events, drought and wildfires across the U.S. West.

Power traded on Friday for Monday delivery jumped to $151 per megawatt hour (MWh) at Palo Verde in Arizona and $95 in SP-15 in Southern California, their highest since the February freeze caused prices across the country to soar.

In addition to soaring power prices, gas for the rest of 2021 in California has traded at its highest in years on expectations an extreme drought in the U.S. West will cut hydropower supplies and force the state to rely more on gas-fired power plants this summer.

That would make it tough for California to reduce carbon dioxide emissions this year and shows how difficult it would be for the most-populous U.S. state to keep the lights on if it starts shutting gas-fired plants in the coming years as it moves toward getting all electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Rare deep freeze leaves more than 2 million Texas customers without power

(Reuters) – A rare deep freeze in Texas that raised demand for power forced the U.S. state’s electric grid operator on Monday to impose rotating blackouts that left more than 2 million customers without power.

The PowerOutage.us website – an ongoing project created to track power outages – said 2,629,684 customers were experiencing outages at 9:44 a.m. ET (1444 GMT).

President Joe Biden declared an emergency on Monday, unlocking federal assistance to Texas, where temperatures on Monday ranged from minus 8 to 21 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 22 to minus 6 Celsius).

Apart from Texas, much of the United States from the Pacific Northwest through the Great Plains and into the mid-Atlantic states was in the grip of bone-chilling weather over the three-day Presidents Day holiday weekend.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) sought to cut power use in response to a winter record of 69,150 MW on Sunday evening, more than 3,200 MW higher than the previous winter peak in January 2018.

About 10,500 MW of customer load was shed at the highest point, enough power to serve approximately two million homes, it said, adding that extreme weather caused many generating units across fuel types to trip offline and become unavailable.

As of early Monday, it said over 30,000 MW of generation had been forced off the system, and rotating outages would likely last throughout the morning and could be initiated until the weather emergency ended.

“Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness said in a statement.

The storms knocked out nearly half the state’s wind power generation capacity on Sunday. Wind generation ranks as the second-largest source of electricity in Texas, accounting for 23% of state power supplies, ERCOT estimates.

Of the 25,000-plus megawatts of wind power capacity normally available in Texas, 12,000 megawatts were out of service on Sunday morning, an ERCOT spokeswoman said.

A level three emergency notice was issued by the regulator, urging customers to limit power usage and prevent an uncontrolled systemwide outage.

The National Weather Service said an Arctic air mass had spread southwards, well beyond areas accustomed to freezing weather, with winter storm warnings posted for most of the Gulf Coast region, Oklahoma and Missouri.

The spot price of electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000% on Monday. [NGA/]

(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum, David Goodman and Howard Goller)