Grid Status

After years of delay and intervention by PJM Interconnection, Delaware’s last coal unit, Indian River, retired in February. With its retirement, PJM’s geographical portmanteau, Delmarva, enters a new era. In our new blog, we break down the Indian River saga, the problems peninsulas bring to transmission, and how poultry are the data centers of Delaware. The Delmarva peninsula is comprised of three states: Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, although its only transmission connections to the rest of PJM come from through Delaware on the northern end. With few higher voltage lines, particularly in the south, high load conditions can lean heavily on internal generation to manage operations, something Delmarva has in limited capacity. Delmarva is home to a high concentration of chicken houses, which rely on energy-intensive ventilation during the summer. This industry means that Delmarva punches above its weight with respect to load, exceeding the demand of other areas in PJM with similar, or even greater, populations. The recently retired unit was the last sizable generator in southern Delmarva. Under previous tight conditions, Indian River’s generation could push back on flows. While line upgrades alleviated PJM’s critical concerns, it remains to be seen how future congestion during a hot summer might play out. Track the price spikes and more at Grid Status. More charts and commentary on our blog: https://lnkd.in/dSQq8xEj

Both NYISO and ISO New England Inc. import millions of cheaper MWhs per year from Canada. With just 10% tariffs, this price advantage is nearly eliminated. In the face of unprecedented tariffs, the heavily interconnected grids of the northeast have seen their international connections with Canada transform into an operational and planning nightmare. We unpack some of the data on operational cooperation and prices in the slides below. With the second tariff deadline pending, ISO-NE and NYISO made exigent circumstances filings with FERC at the end of last week. These filings seek immediate approval of tariff changes designed to allow the ISOs to begin collecting import tariffs. Without these changes, the ISOs could face insolvency - forced to pay with no mechanism to allocate costs and no retroactive ratemaking. Uncertainty has extended beyond implementation to what should be simple facts, such as the actual rate, which was unclear for electricity. Tariffs on inputs also increase the cost of internal generation in the region as several natural gas pipelines interconnect with or have their origin points in Canada. Between New York and New England, nearly 5 GWs of generators rely on gas from the Iroquois pipeline alone, which comes down from Canada through Waddington, NY. Read more on our blog: https://lnkd.in/gg77VTF7

It’s been a record-breaking week in ERCOT. Let’s analyze how cold weather, load growth, and new generation sources are creating conditions never before seen in Texas. ERCOT broke its record winter peak yesterday and today, culminating in a new record above 80 GW for the first time at 8AM CST this morning. But even more has been going on under the hood in the last few days. Cold temperatures were widespread across Texas, reaching the low teens in Dallas and below freezing in Houston and Austin. Electric heating helped drive a robust demand ramp, although it ended up several GWs below ERCOT’s day-ahead forecast. As load peaked, net load exceeded last summer’s record, nearly hitting 71 GW at 7:10 AM CST. Cold weather failed to chill ERCOT’s hot battery storage fleet, with discharge approaching 4600 MW, ~250 MW higher than the previous record, also at 7:10 AM CST. Alongside these records, solar growth has continued, with a new record jumping 2 GW just last Sunday to cross 24 GW for the first time. Yesterday, Rabbit Hill captured the dreams of those looking to strike it rich (and nightmares of folks managing risk) in ERCOT with sustained LMPs well above what might normally be considered extreme pricing. In fact, Rabbit Hill can now claim the 90 highest single-interval settlement point prices since at least 2011. This location north of Austin has made frequent appearances in ERCOT’s planning materials in recent years as Texas’ general load growth and plans for massive local industrial facilities have triggered multiple transmission upgrades and expansions. Track records in ERCOT and all other ISOs using our Record Tracker tool, and download data via our Data Exporter tool, API, or Snowflake to manage your operations during extreme events.?

Today, we are launching Grid Status on Snowflake Marketplace! With Snowflake, customers get instant access to 200+ power market and electric grid datasets that are curated and maintained by our team of experts. Join customers like Cypress Creek Renewables in integrating Grid Status into your operations: “Using Grid Status on Snowflake has been a game-changer for CCR, enabling us to analyze large volumes of historical market data and gain a deeper understanding of energy markets to optimize asset operations.” - Ajit Gopalakrishnan, Senior Manager, Quantitative Analytics Discover the fastest and most scalable way to access the energy data your team needs. Whether it's through our Data Exporter tool, our API, or now Snowflake, we're here to help you navigate the complex energy markets. Reach out now to start a free evaluation!

Last week, a ~1 GW nuclear unit tripped outside of Pittsburgh. This is how the trip impacted grid operations in the following 15 minutes. As generation from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station declined, PJM Interconnection's Area Control Error (ACE) swung negative, indicating a need for other generation to turn up or on immediately. ACE is a key signal to understand system balance and often portends spikes in the energy component of LMPs. Prices rapidly decreased, but ACE remained high due to the generation spun up to meet the gap. It takes longer to turn generation off the right way as opposed to a forced outage, so ACE remained elevated and prices declined to below their pre-trip level.

We just added 150+ new nodes focused on the PJM Interconnection to our pricing map. We get a lot of questions about how we choose the nodes to display and where we source the node locations from. This new batch of nodes focuses on capturing consistent congestion patterns, important legacy generators (like hydropower), emerging trends such as solar on Dominion Energy's southern border, and the famously constrained Delmarva Peninsula served by Delmarva Power. In each of these instances, we manually cross-referenced different sources to determine the location. Feel free to reach out if there are specific spots on the grid where you’d like to see more map coverage!

???3 Days of wholesale electricity prices in 90 seconds Grid conditions east of the Rockies were challenging throughout last week's winter storm. Extreme cold weather induced new demand peaks, constrained access to gas, and contributed to record-setting days for renewable generation. The prices on the map reflect these conditions and the actions of grid operators to balance systems and keep the lights on!

Today the PJM Interconnection set a new winter demand record, ~145GW, displacing a decade-old peak Prior to the new record, only a single day had cracked the winter top ten in the last ten years. Impressively, the RTO accomplished this while exporting ~8 GW to neighbors. In part, to Tennessee Valley Authority, who set a new all-time demand record this morning with 35.3 GW. This eclipsed last January's record-breaking 34.6 GW. TVA is certainly hurting for missing a unit at both Watts Bar and Sequoyah the last few days as well, so that interchange likely played a larger role than normal. It also appears that Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) was within ~1 GW of their winter record, while ERCOT had its second highest demand winter day ever. The eastern half of the country has quite a ride of winter weather to start the year. Track all of this and more at https://lnkd.in/ewVdbz3r

The speed at which batteries have taken over ancillary services in ERCOT is impressive! At some point, batteries will saturate the market. Saturation has more than one definition, but the simplest is the point at which there is enough battery capacity attempting to provide ancillary services that the price declines and operators begin to shift towards energy. That moment may be now. We cover this and many other nuances of battery operations and economics in our latest post on the Grid Status blog: https://lnkd.in/gpFqj_YY

As impacts from the winter storm mounted in PJM Interconnection this morning, the AP South internal interface exceeded its warning limit, triggering clear separation geographically via congestion pricing. As the PJM resource mix continues to evolve alongside explosive demand growth, managing these internal interfaces will become more important even as their operational complexity grows. Additionally, as the cold and snow settled in over the Mid-Atlantic, Dominion’s demand exceeded AEP’s for most of the morning, a result of both storm placement and a greater reliance on electric heating. Electric heating is the dominant technology across much of the southeast, so as you move further south in Dominion's territory, it becomes more prevalent. Morning heating demand during a winter storm in this region can have substantial impacts on both load and prices. #energymarkets #winterstorm #data