sexy_wash_bucket

sexy_wash_bucket t1_j1mmgru wrote

Reply to comment by blodreina_kumWonkru in Any context other than it’s really cold? Peco asking for electricity conservation. by Unlucky-External5648

Lots of boring judicial history there but the main gist is that we (the U.S.) created RTOs (like PJM) to ensure that every bit of electricity in a region was being managed by one overall regulator to maximize synergies. Every provider is required to bid (basically) 100% of their capacity on the day-ahead market, every day. If we didn’t force energy bids like this, providers could e.g. withhold energy until peak demand times to maximize profits, essentially giving an F U to people at non peak times and leaving them susceptible to blackouts. The bidding system is just the method that FERC employs to find a fair price to pay providers despite there being so many - but in reality, it’s just the chosen strategy to ensure all electricity being produced enters the market.

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sexy_wash_bucket t1_j1md45k wrote

Reply to comment by felldestroyed in Any context other than it’s really cold? Peco asking for electricity conservation. by Unlucky-External5648

Yup. Power plants can run into a lot of issues when it’s too cold. PJM’s are much more resilient than Texas’s, but that is a very low bar. If NG plants aren’t running, electricity needs to be dispatched instead for heating purposes instead of NG. That adds to capacity needs, which makes it even harder for PJM to meet demand.

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sexy_wash_bucket t1_j1lbnui wrote

Reply to comment by fergy80 in Any context other than it’s really cold? Peco asking for electricity conservation. by Unlucky-External5648

Sort of. The day-ahead market is heavily regulated on a federal level by FEEC, so every provider is required to bid in the market for all of their capacity. PJM can’t do anything to increase bids besides wait for a new plant to be built. But they can anticipate when bids won’t cover projected capacity demand.

Although (into the nitty gritty here), there’s also smaller scale one-state plants that actually fall outside of FERC jurisdiction that can add to capacity, but PJM has less control over them and PJM also factors them into capacity projections.

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sexy_wash_bucket t1_j1kv38x wrote

Reply to Any context other than it’s really cold? Peco asking for electricity conservation. by Unlucky-External5648

Oh baby I got this. Energy lawyer here. This is caused by two different situations.

First is capacity issues. PJM electricity is sold on the “day-ahead” market, meaning that one day in advance, providers “bid” on prices for dispatch, and each bidder is dispatched in reverse order from least expensive to most expensive. But if the day-ahead market bids can’t accommodate the needed estimated capacity, PJM knows there could be outages.

The second issue is the actual transmission lines. Transmission lines have a “thermal constraint”: a maximum amount of power that can flow through without the current going haywire and electrocuting squirrels. On busy electricity days, more and more electricity demand through those lines gets them very close to their thermal limits, so utilities have to cut back or risk frying their lines. In a big city like Philly, constraints can be met much faster.

But (you say), shouldn’t they have backstops in place to prevent these issues? This seems foreseeable, no? Oh yeah. When one or both of these issues presents itself, PJM has to resort to “demand response” tactics: ways to change demand so it can be closer to actual supply. The most common demand response strategy is interrupted service. The gist there is that your contract with the utility allows the utility to shut off your power for a pre-allotted amount of time and rebate you for the time without power. Another is rolling blackouts, which will certainly not be employed in this situation because I wouldn’t think people want their homes to be 30 degrees with no warning. If interrupted service users can’t even account for the overblown demand, PJM’s got big problems.

This text shows just how much energy is pumping through our grid right now (and how worried PJM is about outages and blackouts).

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