New England Electrical Grid

Seems worth noting that this morning, (and I suspect the next few days), is showing off our incomplete energy transition/regional challenges.

As of 11AM today, the lights are being kept on in part by running 4.4GW of oil fired generation - 26% of total power on the grid, and the coal plant is operating at 300MW.
(Edit: 1/21 10:30AM we managed to get up to 5.4GW of oil fired generation in operation.)
 
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Prospect St substation work continues with a whole bunch of foundation work for the new retaining/noise wall.
 
The Bow, NH coal plant has closed, which means no more coal on the New England grid:
www.concordmonitor.com

Coal power is gone: Merrimack Station in Bow has shut for good - Concord Monitor

Six decades after it began, coal-fired electricity is officially gone from New England following the shut-down of Merrimack Station in Bow, the region’s last power plant of its kind. Merrimack Station, which started in 1960 during a wave of new coal-fired electricity in the Northeast, ceased...
www.concordmonitor.com www.concordmonitor.com
 
Given the peaker role it played, I wonder when it received its last coal delivery.
 
www.bostonglobe.com

Years in the making, and years overdue, hydropower from Quebec to hit New England’s grid soon - The Boston Globe

Clean energy giant Avangrid cleared the final regulatory hurdle needed to complete a 145-mile line bringing hydroelectricity from Quebec to Maine.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
Clean energy giant Avangrid cleared the final regulatory hurdle on Wednesday to complete its long-awaited New England Clean Energy Connect, a 145-mile transmission line to bring hydroelectricity from Quebec to Maine, by the end of this year.
[...]
Once operational, the line will deliver some 1,200 megawatts of hydropower to Massachusetts via the New England grid, enough to power more than one million homes, while helping stabilize energy prices in the region.
Controversies and opposition have delayed completing the transmission line, originally scheduled to go online in 2022, multiple times.
But with the final permit in hand, Avangrid says it’s finally good to go.
Click to expand...
 
Ironically the line might end up being used to export power from New England to Quebec; from browsing Electricitymaps from time to time we were exporting ~900-1000MW to Quebec over the past few weeks, though we're importing a measly 2 MW right now.
 
4300th said:
Ironically the line might end up being used to export power from New England to Quebec; from browsing Electricitymaps from time to time we were exporting ~900-1000MW to Quebec over the past few weeks, though we're importing a measly 2 MW right now.
Click to expand...
This is still one of the lowest load times of year for our region, and it's been much windier and (I think) sunnier than usual which doesn't hurt either.

On that site, go change to the "last 12 months" view at the bottom left and then look at the monthly electricity net flow for New England/ISO-NE. It's those massive flows in Dec-Feb that really set the whole year.

Basically, while the flow will certainly reverse sometimes, I doubt the balance of power for the year is going to be anything other than massive imports by us in the typical year.
 
NECEC goes online today! Great success for a cleaner grid after a really tumultuous history. I think history will look unkindly on the efforts to stop this from the environmental organizations.

www.pressherald.com

NECEC power line to begin commercial operations Friday

The 145-mile line, which became a political flashpoint, is set to bring electricity from Canada to the New England grid via northwestern Maine.
www.pressherald.com www.pressherald.com


Edited to add a non-paywalled link:

www.wmtw.com

CMP power corridor begins delivering power to the grid

The 145-mile corridor, years in the making, went online on Friday
www.wmtw.com www.wmtw.com
 
millerm277 said:
Seems worth noting that this morning, (and I suspect the next few days), is showing off our incomplete energy transition/regional challenges.

As of 11AM today, the lights are being kept on in part by running 4.4GW of oil fired generation - 26% of total power on the grid, and the coal plant is operating at 300MW.
(Edit: 1/21 10:30AM we managed to get up to 5.4GW of oil fired generation in operation.)
Click to expand...
With another big cold spell almost a year apart, it'll be interesting to see what looks different in the patterns. It already seems obvious that the NECEC and the wind additions are having some effects.

We're currently over 5GW of imports and the NECEC has been importing at/near ~1.2GW continuously all day. And it's pretty much every time I've checked today, it's been the cheapest import link + Maine has had noticeably lower spot prices than the rest of the region.

Meanwhile wind appears to have gotten as high as 1480MW (1.48GW) today, and while I'm not sure if it's a new record, I know it is above what was the record wind output for the region 6 months ago.

I'm particularly interested to see what this means for how often and for how long we have to turn to significant amounts of oil-fired generation.
 
It also helps a lot that Quebec turned the spigots back on - the older Quebec-New England transmission (Phase 2) is back importing power from Quebec, with 784MW flowing into New England via that rather than the other way around. I wonder if Quebec's drought issues have improved?
 
Oil-fired generation has increased to 5.1GW on this very cold morning, while gas-fired generation has fallen to 3.1GW. NECEC holding steady at 1.1GW. Wind has unfortunately fallen to 797MW.
 
Not great! The ugly dark wedge on the bottom is oil coming online.

Edited: represents 35% of total production and 77%(!) of total emissions. We need to recon with the fact that even if this were natural gas it would be a much better solution. Additional renewable capacity would be ideal but just burning oil when it’s cold is an awful baseline.

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