Widespread outages: A view of the US Capitol as snow fell in Washington last Sunday. A massive winter storm is sweeping across the United States, threatening tens of millions of Americans with blackouts, transportation chaos and bone-chilling cold. — AFP
NEW YORK: US power grids are expected to grapple with unprecedented seasonal demand and the threat of blackouts after a damaging winter storm coated parts of the South and Mid-Atlantic in ice – leaving brutal cold in its wake.
New York may have seen a few more snowflakes yesterday as the biggest winter storm in years pushes out of the United States.
But frigid wind chills will likely persist all week, testing seasonal electricity-demand records from New England to Texas.
The PJM Interconnection grid that stretches from Chicago to Washington DC warned late on Sunday that it’s bracing for seven straight days of extreme demand, representing “a winter streak that PJM has never experienced.”
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as Ercot, projected record demand of 86GW yesterday, which would surpass the previous high set in August 2023.
The threat of a supply squeeze is dire enough that PJM is taking the unusual step of paying some major customers such as manufacturers to curb power use to help prevent the need for rolling, residential blackouts. Ercot is taking similar measures.
Yesterday was a day of tests of infrastructure and patience across most of the nation’s major population centres.
Brutal cold, a heavy layer of snow and destructive ice accumulations will continue to snarl highway, rail and air travel, including public transit systems in New York, New Jersey and farther afield.
Airlines will have a major task in unravelling the chaos from thousands of flight cancellations since the storm emerged late last week.
The US natural gas benchmark jumped as much as 19% to more than US$6 per million British thermal units when trading opened late on Sunday, a level not seen since 2022.
Dallas is under an extreme cold warning until today with wind chills expected to plunge as low as minus 10ºF (minus 23ºC). Overnight lows in Washington DC will struggle to reach 10ºF for most of the week. The upper Midwest, meanwhile, is shivering, with wind chills around minus 40ºF.
Electricity prices have soared and grid operators have been obtaining federal waivers from some pollution limits so they can employ dirtier power-plant fuels such as diesel and coal.
The US government also asked grid operators to make backup power available from facilities including data centres.
Meanwhile, some utilities are scrambling to recover from widespread outages. Around 848,000 homes and businesses were without power as of 11:30pm in New York on Sunday.
The prolonged freeze in coming days will increase the risk of power outages as the weight of the ice snaps more limbs on lines.
Day-ahead power prices for yesterday in the PJM grid territory were the highest since a disastrous polar vortex in early 2014. In the grids covering New York City and parts of New England, on-peak average prices for yesterday also touched all-time highs.
PJM on-peak power for yesterday rose to an average of US$638.73 a MWh, according to grid data compiled by MCG Energy Solutions LLC.
In Ercot’s North hub that includes Dallas, power for yesterday’s peak-demand hours climbed 1,200% from the Sunday average to US$516.25 a MWh, the most since August 2023.
On Sunday, the Energy Department said it issued emergency orders that authorised PJM to run power plants at maximum capability, including those fuelled by coal and oil, regardless of limits established under environmental rules or state law.
Similar orders to mitigate blackouts were issued for ISO New England and Ercot late Sunday evening. — Bloomberg
