By Steve Haner,

A proprietary energy industry newsletter shared with Bacon’s Rebellion reports that the PJM Interconnection regional electricity grid probably set a summer record for demand on Thursday, July 2.  The old peak of 165,563 megawatts in the 13-state region was seen in 2006.

The system maintained its service by activating demand reduction programs forcing big users to shed about 6,000 megawatts of load but never issued an order for the large data centers to turn on their backup generators.  With the demand reduction efforts, Thursday’s (and the weekend’s) peak was about 162,700 but if you add the shed load back in the old peak was passed. 

A “deploy all resources” order was issued to Dominion and two other Mid Atlantic load serving entities for the first time since that was added to the emergency toolbox a decade ago.

This new peak claim is one observer’s conclusion and not an official PJM pronouncement. That will come later. Dominion Energy may have set a new summer peak.  But the numbers cited match observations I made during the five-day hot spell, constantly opening the PJM Markets and Operations website to watch for a new peak.  PJM was posting emergency directives not seen since last winter’s bitter cold spell.

Over the course of the five-day heat wave, as is often the case, wind energy in the region dropped to a minimum.  High pressure domes often have that effect, and at peak times in the afternoon PJM was getting more electricity from oil-fired generators than from wind turbines. An easy prediction: the same will still happen in similar weather even after Dominion finishes its massive offshore wind project. 

As solar energy trailed off later in the afternoon, but the air conditioners were still on high, marginal spot prices for energy in the region reached astronomical prices of $2,000 to $2,500 per megawatt (compared to $35 at this hour.)  Issues caused by a shortage of transmission lines were evident when the eastern zone prices soared higher than the western zone prices.

Thursday was the day before a three-day holiday weekend.  Many industrial or office locations were probably not using their maximum amount of electricity.  Friday and Saturday were hotter than Thursday in most locations but were not full workdays.  Similar weather on a weekday not near a holiday could easily force a new peak.   

Despite all the media hype, the five-day heat wave was nothing unusual, just the high end of normal. The official temperature for Richmond out at the airport only touched 100 degrees Fahrenheit one day, Saturday, and for most of that day was in the high 90s. (In Sunday morning’s Richmond Times Dispatch, the Saturday high was reported as 99).  In the urban and suburban concrete and asphalt heat sinks we’ve surrounded ourselves with, higher peaks were likely.

According to the unofficial summary, PJM took the following emergency actions Thursday to maintain service to the 67 million Americans in its service territory:

• A Pre-emergency Demand Response Load Management Reduction issued at 11:30 a.m. The users taking the supply cutback have contracted in advance to do so, for compensation, and with that advanced consent their capacity to absorb a “DR” directive is counted as a capacity asset.  (Hence it is fair to add it back in determining the peak usage for the day.)
• Maximum Generation Emergency Action – Capacity Emergency, declared for the Mid Atlantic Dominion region at 5:18 p.m. and set to expire at 8:40 p.m.
• Transmission Security – Deploy All Resources Action: Issued: 5:36 p.m.; effective: 5:36 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. for Baltimore Gas and Electric, Dominion and Pepco Zones.  Among other things that means all generating units not yet there should go to emergency maximum, and anything available but not online should do the same.  As noted, this was a first time for this order.  (Star Trek fans will hear Scottie warning, anymore and she’s gonna blow, Captain!)
• Emergency Use of Back-Up Generator Warning for Mid-Atlantic/Dominion: Issued at 5:32 pm, after being authorized by the federal Department of Energy. This was never executed, and no orders for data centers or others to switch to backups were issued, but notably the authority stayed in force over the weekend.
• Other orders intended to compensate for high or low voltage as PJM worked to keep the grid in balance during the high demand hours.

Throughout the whole five days the nuclear, natural gas and coal plants kept everything running (80 percent or so of load at most times), and even the remaining oil-fired units were engaged.  PJM has more solar installed these days than it used to, with more on the way, but it will never carry the load, not with all the batteries in the world to back it up.  And wind is a disaster waiting to happen if we let it get too big on the system.