Chaotic Christmas for the Grid (2022)
Christmas Weekend, 2022
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
Then the lights went out.
A very strange thing happened to the electric grid across much of the eastern half of the U.S. during the Christmas holiday weekend in 2022. Especially given that many commercial and industrial businesses were shut down for the holiday.
Yet, during the entire weekend, rolling blackouts and emergencies were implemented by grid operators Duke, TVA and PJM:
Duke and TVA implemented rolling blackouts for much of the weekend. PJM declared a Level 2 emergency (one step below where rolling blackouts are implemented), across much of it’s territory.
The PJM situation is especially relevant here – because much energy-intensive heavy industry, such as steel making and manufacturing, exists within its footprint:
Winter Storm Elliott
Winter Storm Elliott arrived just in time for the Christmas 2022 weekend. Weather forecasters had warned for a week to expect brutal frigid temperatures to come with it.
Regardless, PJM is no stranger to cold weather. Extreme weather plans are well-established, and those plans were activated well in advance of the arrival of Elliott. Power generation companies were alerted in plenty of time to be ready to provide additional power, if needed. PJM has one of the best power reserve levels available to grid operators in the country.
That weekend, total power generation resources within PJM were rated to provide 186 GigaWatts (GW), which included almost 29 GW of reserve power supply.
Customer electric demand was high, but well within the PJM power generation capabilities. As stronger effects of Elliott were starting to be felt, PJM put out routine calls for additional generation to come online.
This time the response was different.
As PJM called reserves to come online, many failed to do so. Almost 46 GW, representing 23% of total generation capacity, failed to deliver power. Over 92% of generation failures were reported to PJM less than an hour before their generation output was expected, or were not reported to PJM at all. This was an unprecedented, virtually simultaneous, loss of much of the reserve power assets for PJM.
Suddenly, PJM didn’t have enough power to meet demand. Various emergency measures were implemented, including activation of Demand Response programs. Wholesale electric pricing surged:
PJM desperately worked to avoid the need for rolling blackouts. It was a very close-run thing for much of the weekend. So, what happened?
To their credit, PJM was very forthcoming with early details of what had occurred. This article includes some of the information published by PJM in a special preliminary report.
Data mining
Wanting to dig deeper, I visited the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) website to download hourly power generation data for PJM during the holiday weekend. This provides how much power was generated each hour, by fuel source.
The following graph has some results of my analysis of that data. It shows how PJM was struggling to meet power demand, beginning at 7:00 pm on Dec 23, 2022. This is why they declared a Level 2 warning and started calling for aggressive power usage cuts. Then power generation fell off a cliff:
Between 11:00 pm Dec 23 and 1:00 am on Dec 24, PJM generation dropped dramatically below power demand. At 00:04 am on Dec 24, PJM made an emergency call to instruct all operating generators to manually increase their output to full. Known as a Synchronized Reserve Event, these are extremely rare and underline the severity of the situation. This lasted until 00:30 am, but two more such events were initiated from 2:23 am – 3:24 am and 4:23 am – 5:51 am.
In addition, a voltage level warning was issued for the entire PJM grid from 4:52 am – 6:34 pm for Dec 24, 2022. Many businesses were urgently requested to reduce their electric consumption.
Various emergency measures continued until 10:00 pm on December 25. The entire Christmas weekend saw much of the eastern half of the U.S. electric grid in severe distress.
PJM has initiated a detailed investigation, and they expect to publish their findings soon. Both NERC and FERC are doing the same. I’ll review their findings if/when they are released.
Consequences
PJM is aggressively pursuing penalties on those electric generators which did not perform.
PJM expects member generation companies to deliver power when it is requested. Such requirements are outlined in their capacity performance framework, which aims to improve power generator performance. Those that fail to deliver electricity during emergencies are fined and those that exceed their power delivery requirements are paid extra. Those that fail to pay penalties may lose their PJM membership.
Recently reported by Utility Dive:
“As much as $2 Billion in fines may be assessed to the PJM generators that did not perform when requested to provide power during Winter Storm Elliott. Four power plant owners – LS Power, J-POWER North America, Rockland Capital and Earthrise Energy – on Tuesday asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to eliminate or reduce more than $275 million in combined penalties against their generating facilities in Illinois for failing to perform during Winter Storm Elliott.”
Issuing such penalties further underlines the severity of the situation faced by PJM during Elliott. The net effect of the penalties on the nonperforming power generation companies is yet to be realized, including the impact to total generation capacity of the PJM fleet.
Summary
Several things stand out about this almost catastrophic event:
It happened during a major holiday weekend.
A massive 23% of power generation assets failed to perform when needed.
Multiple grid operators were affected at the same time, in the eastern half of the grid.
It affected generators using almost any fuel source (but not nuclear).
PJM is well prepared for winter storms; this should not have happened.
This happened on a weekend, during a major holiday. Most businesses were using minimal power requirements. What if this had happened during a regular work week, especially during peak demand?
The debacle that occurred during Winter Storm Elliott may be an early warning of lurking grid reliability issues we may soon face.
How much is your business at risk from unreliable power? Your business doesn’t have to be a victim of such issues. There are clean, affordable alternatives to ensure you have the power required to run your business.
Please contact me if you would like to confidentially discuss your goals and potential solutions.