ISO New England called energy emergency, turned to operating reserves after transmission failure
ISO New England called energy emergency, turned to operating reserves after transmission failure | Utility Dive
A “transmission equipment failure” Wednesday evening sent the New England grid operator scrambling to draw down capacity reserves as demand rose higher than anticipated.
The failure occurred shortly after 6 p.m., and “significantly reduced imported electricity coming to New England,” the independent system operator said in a Thursday blog post.“At the same time, consumer demand for electricity was slightly higher than expected. This combination left the region short of the resources required to meet consumer demand and required operating reserves.”
In response, ISO New England declared an Energy Emergency Alert Level 1 and utilized the region’s 30-minute operating reserves. An EEA Level 1 is the lowest of three emergency levels defined by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., and is called when an operator is concerned about maintaining contingency reserves.
The New England grid operator typically maintains about 625 MW in its 30-minute reserves and up to 2,250 MW in its 10-minute reserves.
The ISO does not yet have details about the equipment failure or extent of the capacity shortage, according to spokesman Matt Kakley.
“We’ll have more information in the coming days as the data is reported and verified,” he said in an email.
The transmission outage occurred during the system’s evening peak, meaning “sufficient resources were not able to respond quickly enough to avoid the capacity deficiency,” the grid operator said. Because of the short duration of the event, however, ISO-NE said it was not necessary to ask the public to reduce consumption.
The capacity deficiency was addressed within half an hour, though the region maintained defensive operating procedures for 3.5 hours “as peak demand receded and the power system returned to normal operations,” the grid operator said. A problem with data feeds to the ISO-NE web site and mobile app, however, “caused these platforms to report erroneously that system conditions were abnormal for several hours after the event.”
Transmission planning has been a major focus as states and grid operators look to maintain grid reliability. In June, eight Northeastern states requested the U.S. Department of Energy help fund and support an interregional transmission planning collaboration across ISO-NE, the New York Independent System Operator and the PJM Interconnection. The grid operators support the effort.
NYISO can export 1,600 MW to ISO-NE, according to a May report from the grid operator. There is no direct transmission connection between PJM and New England, however.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.