#UNITED STATES POWER GRIDS MANUAL#

Drought conditions in the Missouri River Basin may affect operations of gas, coal or nuclear plants in the Southwest Power Pool that rely on the river for cooling water supplies, the report said.

#UNITED STATES POWER GRIDS MANUAL#

In Texas, a “combination of extreme peak demand, low wind, and high outage rates from thermal generators could require system operators to use emergency procedures, up to and including temporary manual load shedding.” Delays in completing new transmission lines now underway “may contribute to localized reliability concerns.”.

But a repeat of the heat dome that scorched the entire West in 2019 could threaten the availability of imported power that the state depends on, causing energy emergencies.

“An elevated risk of energy emergencies persists” across the West this summer “as dry hydrological conditions threaten the availability of hydroelectric energy for transfer.” Assuming that nearly 3,400 megawatts of new resources are available as scheduled this summer, California should be able to meet peak power demands this summer, the report said.

“More extreme temperatures, higher generation outages, or low wind conditions expose the MISO North and Central areas to higher risk of temporary operator-initiated load shedding to maintain system reliability,” the report said of the MISO region, which runs from Canada’s Manitoba province to Louisiana.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), grid manager and energy market operator in the central Midwest, “faces a capacity shortfall in its North and Central areas, resulting in high risk of energy emergencies during peak summer conditions.” Highlighting the most serious regional threats, the report said: “The pace of our grid transformation is a little out of synch” with the technical requirements for the system’s operation, he said. But the challenges demand quick action on setting technical equipment standards to deal with the problem, he added. “We truly support that,” he said of the clean energy shift. The issue is not a reason to back away from moving the grid to carbon-free wind and solar, Moura said. “That is one of the most dangerous things to happen on the bulk power system,” Moura said about the inverter disruption issue, because grid operators can be caught by surprise by the outages just when the finely balanced systems are already dealing with instability. The unexpected events disrupted traditional power plants, interfered with grid recovery operations and caused some outages of customer-owned power units, NERC said. The report cited incidents in May and June of last year when the Texas system was hit with widespread solar farm shutdowns, followed by similar outages in California between June and August. Those that shut down compound stress on the grid, he added in a briefing yesterday. The devices, called power inverters, must be programmed to “ride through” short-term disturbances, such as the loss of a large power plant or high-voltage line, but too often they are not, Moura said. The NERC report also highlighted what it called an increased, urgent hazard to grid operations from the electronic controls that link wind and solar farms to high-voltage grid networks. How the summer unfolds also may have political ramifications, as it could affect public support for President Joe Biden’s push to decarbonize the U.S. Grid operators are dealing with an increasing reliance on intermittent resources like wind and solar as coal units retire and the reliability and emissions of gas resources comes under scrutiny. NERC’s analysis examined the potential punch of extreme weather, which may wreak havoc on everything from reduced hydropower to transmission lines brought down by wildfires. It’s clear the risks are spreading,” Moura said.

United states power grids