Extra Power was Needed to Keep The Regional Electricity Grid going on Wednesday

July 14, 2023      

Brutal heat combined with a sudden shortfall in imported electricity caused the operators of New England’s power grid to fire up extra generators for a half hour on Wednesday.

The shortfall in electricity production versus demand, known as a capacity deficiency, began shortly after 6 p.m. as a “transmission equipment failure significantly reduced imported electricity coming to New England.” The six-state region can import or export electricity from New York, Quebec and New Brunswick as needed; details of the failure were not available Thursday.

Demand for electricity production by power plants often spikes at around 6 p.m. on a summer weekday because people turn on air conditioning as they get home from work and the region’s solar production – which on a sunny afternoon now generates three times as much electricity as Seabrook Station nuclear plant – begins to wind down.

This combination on Wednesday resulted in more demand for electricity than was scheduled to be produced by power plants, leading ISO-New England, which operates the grid, to implement Actions 1 and 2 under Operating Procedure No. 4. That includes ordering immediate generation from some units that can fire up quickly, such as two kerosene-fired combustion turbines at Merrimack Station in Bow.

“The capacity deficiency was mitigated within 30 minutes,” ISO-NE wrote in a report, although a problem caused the website and mobile app to show abnormal operations for several more hours.

The deficiency was never great enough to request the public to voluntarily reduce usage, a form of demand response that has proved effective in past summer surges.

Widespread outages are anticipated to continue trending upward as summer continues, which reinforces the need for backup power.

Contact South Shore Generator Sales & Service.

Source: concordmonitor

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