Piclo and NECEC have Partnered on a Piece in T&D World on Seasonal Peaks and Grid FlexibilityPiclo


Posted December 21, 2023

Seasons Are Changing And So Should Our Grid: Meeting Peak Demand
New England’s grid operator put a new modeling tool to use and discovered that it has a sufficient winter power supply for the next few years, thanks in large part to the broad adoption of solar power.

By: Tim Snyder, John Greene

As we confront the specter of another winter, the threat of extreme weather events and their impact on our grid is ever-present. The weather has been relentless in recent years – from the cold snap that put New England on ice in 2023, to the Winter Storm Elliot ravaging the country last December, to the heat wave that made the Pacific Northwest sweat in 2021. According to a NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 87% of Americans say that they have experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years – by that calculation, most Americans have felt the strain that climate extremes inflict on our energy infrastructure. These, now commonplace, seasonal extremes are an urgent call to rethink how our grid handles these and other challenges.

Texas’s 2021 experience with Winter Storm Uri proves the adage that everything is bigger in the Lone Star State. The power outages resulting from that storm illustrate the severity of the predicament with our grid. During the storm, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reported that consumer demand for electricity exceeded available generation capacity by an alarming 12 gigawatts. The situation became so dire that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) ordered power providers to cut off customers, at one point totaling 20 gigawatts of demand, to prevent the grid from failing completely. The ensuing blackouts contributed to hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage.

Sadly, the storm in Texas was not an isolated event. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) 2023-2024 Winter Reliability Assessment published this November issued a stark warning — more than half of the US could fall short on electricity supply during extreme cold events this winter. NERC’s assessment underscores the pressing need to ensure that our grid can withstand not only winter storms but the looming threat of any extreme weather events that create energy emergencies throughout the year.

However, there is a notable exception to NERC’s predictions. A key part of a resilient, secure grid is the exploitation of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). New England’s grid operator put a new modeling tool to use and discovered that it has a sufficient winter power supply for the next few years, thanks in large part to the broad adoption of solar power. These types of DERs  can have a profound and positive effect on system reliability if deployed at scale and managed properly.

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