Iso New England Real Time Info

[peakbagger]

For those interested in "The New England Grid" this link may be of interest

http://isoexpress.iso-ne.com/guest-hub;jsessionid=3C1E17A98AC6137CACCCA6E138F309DD

Interesting to see half the power comes from gas plants and how little comes from Coal and oil. If the weather is predictable and there isn't a lot of heating load, gas plants put out a lot of power but they have to buy gas one day in advance so any short term surprises will tend to be filled with other fuels. Let there be a supply interruption in gas and the prices can go sky high.

 

[Vic99]

Looking at the fuel mix chart on the bottom, I notice no solar even under renewables. Am I looking in the wrong place or is it much less than 1% and they don't even bother to list it?

 

[mustash29]

I would think solar would be lumped into the renewables catagory. To my knowledge, there are not any significant commercial solar installations in the NE. Lots of folks with home units & grid tie but maybe they are not counting them.

Here's another intresting site with neet graphs to watch during heat waves. I work at a trash to energy incinerator plant. I had this puppy up on an extra screen a LOT during last week.

http://www.cvx.com/

 

[Grisu]

Looking at the fuel mix chart on the bottom, I notice no solar even under renewables. Am I looking in the wrong place or is it much less than 1% and they don't even bother to list it?

The other reason could be that for residential use the solar gain first offsets household use and only then makes the meter spin backward. Thus, its contribution will not really show up on the grid although it may reduce total demand.

 

[peakbagger]

ISO New England normally has an electronic data connection directly to each plants metering so its easy to know where the power is coming from and its fuel source. Most of the new england solar installations are smaller net metered installations so ISO doesn't really have a way of measuring the real time contribution. If solar becomes much larger as part of the power pool, at some point the load on the system might be impacted and they might have to deal with it. For now I expect the total solar installations probably don't even come close to the transmission losses in the wires.

ISO doesn't really don't know how much total power is being used, all they know is how many power stations are running and at what rate and assume that what goes into the grid goes out of it. If the voltage start to drop, they add more generation and if the power factor acts up they put on more VARS. If real time smart meters are ever fully implemented region wide they may be able to get real time usage but I expect its a long way off. On occasion "the grid" is called the worlds most complicated machine and it lives up to that reputation.

One of the locals in my area is looking at what it would take for all the local small solar installations to sell SRECs. In that case most likely we will have to install revenue grade meters and have a third party auditor come up and read the meters a few times per year so it wouldn't be real time. It wont be very lucrative but might offset the power bill we get to be connected to the grid.