New England Power Prices 8/11

[peakbagger]

Looks like today is not a good day to be buying wholesale power, over $1,450 dollars a MW (it was $30 a watt this morning). Its 2:30 PM with another couple of hours of peak load still to come.

Here is link to the website, its real time so not much use several hours from now.

http://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts

Oil fired generation went from 95 MW to over 2100 MWs, generally this means the "peakers" are running which are gas turbines run on jet fuel, not very efficient but there when they are needed.

If one of the remaining nukes trip, there will most likely be mandatory load planning.

 

[peakbagger]

Everything is back in the green, the power prices peaked out at $2690/MW around 2:50 PM. At 3:40 it was $79/MW

 

[begreen]

Heavy air conditioning day?

 

[peakbagger]

Record high temps and humidity, heat indexes over 100 deg F.

 

[begreen]

Ugh.

 

[iamlucky13]

In a lot of areas, steam plants have to derate in those hot conditions due to limited cooling capacity. It makes the limited generating capacity worse.

Too bad the wholesale market is way is not economical to meter on household scales over these short time periods. A 5 kW backup generator could earn about $7 per hour, while burning about $2 per hour in fuel. Sure, solar panels get net metered, but can't increase capacity at crunch times like this, and the residential rate effectively represents a year round average cost/value.

 

[Brian26]

I noticed the

Looks like today is not a good day to be buying wholesale power, over $1,450 dollars a MW (it was $30 a watt this morning). Its 2:30 PM with another couple of hours of peak load still to come.

Here is link to the website, its real time so not much use several hours from now.

http://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts

Oil fired generation went from 95 MW to over 2100 MWs, generally this means the "peakers" are running which are gas turbines run on jet fuel, not very efficient but there when they are needed.

If one of the remaining nukes trip, there will most likely be mandatory load planning.

There is a power plant down in New Haven harbor they only use during peak times. It looked like it was running full bore yesterday. Its crazy that it sits idle probably 90 percent of the time and they only use it on the rare days of high demand for a/c.





The project added three highly efficient General Electric LM-6000 combustion turbines at the site of the existing New Haven Harbor facility. These turbines use state-of-the-art technology to provide residents of Southwest Connecticut with power during periods of peak demand for electricity.

The new turbines are dual-fueled and use either natural gas or ultra low sulfur fuel oil. These are the cleanest fuels available.

The project included state-of-the art emissions controls that meet the latest environmental standards. A Selective Catalytic Reduction system and water injection were installed to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 90 percent or more. A combustion catalyst has reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 80 to 85 percent.

Peaking units can rapidly produce electricity and are most often used during periods of high demand – for example, during sweltering afternoons when air conditioners are in constant use. The GE LM-6000 turbines at New Haven can reach full output within 10 minutes of being called into service.

As peaking units, these turbines operate only during periods of peak power demand. The facility is helping to improve the reliability of the transmission system by quickly providing power when required by the NE-ISO.

PSEG Power Connecticut is committed to providing the state with reliable and environmentally responsible energy.

 

[peakbagger]

I tested those units in New Haven (they were right next to I 95 at an old power plant site along a river) when they were new.

Most peakers can run on natural gas but on high power demand days, they typically cant get enough natural gas to run as the region doesn't have a lot of extra natural gas available. The reason they don't run the plants full time is that they aren't very efficient since they are simple cycle meaning they are exhausting 800 degree heat. They are cheap, quick to build and can generate power in minutes.

The most efficient plants are combined cycle plants, they take the exhaust from the gas turbines and then run it through heat recovery steam generators to generate steam which is then run through a steam turbine to generate more power with no extra fuel. In Europe they go one step farther and take the waste heat downstream of the HRSG and heat hot water for district heating systems. They are a lot more expensive to build and take longer to get up to full power.

The ISO express site has a graph of the source of power for the region, the main source of power for New England earlier this week was from combined cycle natural gas plants at 60% plus or minus with about 25% nuclear, 10% hydro and 5% renewables (wind and solar). Some of the big hydros in Maine with storage lakes can ramp up a bit if they have storage in the ponds but solar and wind cant be ramped up. Therefore peakers fill in the difference on hot days. They also tend to be located in urban areas in case the transmission grid is damaged (during a hurricane).

A big issue facing New England is that there is a short term temptation to buy large amounts of Canadian hydro from Northern Quebec. Its cheap renewable power but there is lot of risk depend on power sent 1000 plus miles. A few years back some morons with a rifle took out one of the main transmission lines for Quebec hydro in Vermont and shut down several hundred MW of power transmission or a few days.

 

[iamlucky13]

A peaking plant near where I live came online not quite 2 years ago with 12 diesel cycle natural gas generators adapted from a 25,000 hp tugboat engine design. The diesels can ramp up as quickly or faster than any turbine, but going with 12 separate units lets them keep whichever units are needed running closer to their maximum efficiency, and the construction cost was cheap - about $1.33 per rated Watt of capacity.

For 2015, it averaged 17.6% of capacity, according to EIA data. It will probably be lower this year due to better snowpack allowing for more consistent hydro operation in our region this year.

I've crunched some numbers on it and figure the electricity it generates (accounting for its low capacity factor) probably averages $0.10-0.15/kWh. That's pretty good for peak power.

 

[jebatty]

I suspect that during some part of the peaking demand is during prime sunlight hours, at least it seems to be where I live. That's also when my PV system is producing lots of power. So isn't the "value" of my PV electricity during peaking periods in the $1450/MW neighborhood, or $1.45/kW? And at my net meter rate of $0.109/kW, isn't the utility saving a substantial amount by having my PV power available? ... which also means less cost into the rate base and lower rates for customers?

And since I paid for the PV system, and the utility had $0 capital cost in having access to my excess electricity at $0 cost, isn't customer financed PV power a really good deal for the utility? And even a better deal for the customer because it also reduces utility capital investment as part of the rate base which customers otherwise pay for in utility cost recovery?

And one more step, having customer financed PV distributed over a wide area, isn't it likely that "average" PV electricity probably is quite reliable, and predictable based on meteorology, which then allows peaking generation to also be predictable, and less used, all at lower customer cost?

 

[jebatty]

I did a search but was unable to find similar data showing peak power cost in Minnesota. Is there a source for this data?

 

[iamlucky13]

I suspect that during some part of the peaking demand is during prime sunlight hours, at least it seems to be where I live. That's also when my PV system is producing lots of power. So isn't the "value" of my PV electricity during peaking periods in the $1450/MW neighborhood, or $1.45/kW? And at my net meter rate of $0.109/kW, isn't the utility saving a substantial amount by having my PV power available? ... which also means less cost into the rate base and lower rates for customers?

Yes, peak demand is usually during daylight hours, especially in the summer. Then again, in some areas, winter demand, and even overall peak demand, occurs either in early morning as homes and businesses have their heat turned up, or in the evening as people return home from work and do the same.

The closer the demand peak is to the mid-day, the better solar can offset it. This is an important consideration in how much solar fits the market well within a given market.

The $1450/MW is what they're paying for only a small fraction of their energy to make up for the higher than predicted demand that they did not purchase energy for ahead of time. It's only worth that much for a few hours at most, a few days a year, and only if they can order enough of it at the time it is needed. Because they can't alter the output of your solar PV, it's value is less even at the peak times, although it does have some value. The rest of the year, it's value is significantly less - presumably averaging somewhere in the general ballpark of $0.109/kWh.

And since I paid for the PV system, and the utility had $0 capital cost in having access to my excess electricity at $0 cost, isn't customer financed PV power a really good deal for the utility? And even a better deal for the customer because it also reduces utility capital investment as part of the rate base which customers otherwise pay for in utility cost recovery?

And one more step, having customer financed PV distributed over a wide area, isn't it likely that "average" PV electricity probably is quite reliable, and predictable based on meteorology, which then allows peaking generation to also be predictable, and less used, all at lower customer cost?

Yes, it saves the utility capital investment, and that is non-trivial is you do a net present value or similar analysis. In a normal business, this is better for the short term results, but not as ideal for longer term results for the business, but the utility market is a lot more complex, so I'm less sure how well that applies.

The base rate deals more with the cost of building and maintaining the distribution infrastructure than the generation infrastructure. If distributed PV reduces the peak demand, it allows the grid to be lower capacity, and slightly lower costs, but this isn't always the case. In Hawaii, many utilities are having to limit residential PV installs until they can make upgrades, despite the fact that the system cost is a slam dunk compared to their electricity costs there, because the lines can't handle the power coming into the system. Long term, Hawaii will be far better for massively increasing their solar capacity, but the cash isn't available to upgrade everything at once.

Solar capacity prediction is extremely coarse over month+ long periods. It's much better over ~1 week periods, and pretty good over the span of a day, but not without surprises. I'm sure this level of solar integration is a field that will advance quite a bit over the next 10-15 years.