The July 21st issue of the BANGOR DAILY NEWS featured an article by Deborah Turcotte titled 'New England Braces for Blackouts'. It read in part as follows:

"BANGOR - The threat is real: This summer New England could experience its first imposed electricity blackouts since the current power grid was developed in the late 1960s. It almost happened June 8, when the region was in the second day of its first power warning of the year. All steps to reduce demand on the grid had been imposed - and there were two steps left. The first was load shedding, where the power is intentionally turned off in selected, undisclosed areas in all six New England states for two hours. The second was rolling blackouts where, if load shedding doesn't work, power is turned back on in the first areas but turned off in other selected, undisclosed areas for two hours. 'It's the right thing to do under the circumstances,' said Jim Sinclair, a spokesman for ISO New England, the nonprofit governing board that oversees the regional power grid. 'But New England has been fortunate not to have to do that in the last 30 years of its current system.' But it's been close. New England has been under three power warnings so far this year, and twice has hit record levels of electricity consumption. On June 7-8, ISO went one step beyond warnings for conservation, and one step before load shedding, when it implemented voltage reductions, where the amount of electricity flowing to homes and businesses is reduced by 5 percent. The region's grid has a 24,600-megawatt capacity. That's the total amount of power that can travel over its lines and into every factory, home and hospital in New England. . . On July 6, 22,523 megawatts were demanded, breaking the week-old record. Power demanded that day was within 900 megawatts of available supply, which was 23,454 megawatts."

The article went on to explain in detail how the load shedding and rolling blackouts would be implemented.

Near the end of the article was the following paragraph: "The threat of rolling blackouts is greater in the summer than in the fall, Sinclair said, but New England could experience them in the winter, too. That's because power usage is greater between November and February. 'We're a winter-peaking utility.' he said."

I have repeatedly read that electrical generation capacity will far exceed demand during the y2k rollover because it occurs during the winter in the U.S. and winter is a time of low demand for electricity. The idea is that even if we do lose some generation capacity because of y2k problems, there will still be more than enough to keep the regional grids up.

Now comes Mr. Jim Sinclair, official spokesman for the New England regional ISO (whom I saw interviewed on a different topic on the ABC National news last night), and he is quoted as saying, "New England could experience rolling blackouts in the winter because. . . we're a winter-peaking utility."

Here's my question: All other things being equal, will 'winter-peaking' utilities in our northern states be more susceptible to y2k outages than utilities in the milder southern states and California because they will have a much smaller generation 'cushion' available?

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Answers

Alberta is a winter-peak province. I suspect most of Canada shares that property.

Jon

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Jeff, thanks for posting this information. I've known about Canadian areas having winter, not summer peak usage, and I've wondered about the New England area but hadn't run across any specifics about it - it's on my long list of things to research. I'm now wondering if the Senate report and other predictions of potential "regional", not grid-wide outages, were a clue that the all-is-well electrical generation-over-load scenario may not apply uniformly across the country. Another clue is that my (New England area)electric bill hits its yearly high in December/January. The trouble is I'm not familiar enough with the amount of transfer which can be made from southern areas which will be in their lower use period in winter, or how much the eastern transmission congestion might interfere with potential transfers. I'll also be glad for anyone's input on this.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Hi Jeff

In Ontario the peak load is indeed in the winter. However, in the greater Toronto area (where I live) the summer peaks are now getting close to the winter peaks. This is partly due to the rapid development of this area and partly due to the fact that Toronto has more office towers (with the resulting needs for AC) than the rest of the province combined.

A couple of weeks ago when it was really hot up this way (low 30s C - humidex of 40-45C) the load hit a record summer peak of 24,000 MW (I think this was just for the Toronto region). The corresponding winter peak record was set in Jan 93 or 94 and was 25,000 MW. That occured in the middle of a cold snap when it was -30C and below for a couple of weeks straight. (I know, all the Albertans are laughing at us wussy Ontarians. If you've ever been to Edmonton in February you'll know why.)

Outside the Toronto region, the peak is very definitely in winter (it's colder and there are far fewer air conditioned office towers etc.) so Ontario Hydro will be watching very carefully at the roll- over.

Like the companies in the US hoping for a break in the heat right now, we up here in the Great White North will all be hoping that a big Arctic hig pressure system won't be heading our way at the end of December!

Regards

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

...even a "high" pressure system....

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

I was told by our local Office of Emergency Mgmt. that a long-range weather forecast service they use, which has been proven accurate the past couple of years, is predicting the return of an "El Nino" type system this year that would result in a colder winter in the Northeast (U.S.), but a mild winter in the Southeast.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Bonnie: The NERC site also has a section on load forcasts by region. You can look at this and see what the predicted margins are estimeted to be. Transmission constraints will limit the amout of energy that can be moved between regions.

Jim

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999

Jim, are the Ioad projections based on average conditions? I read the Operating Committee report ( I think it was the OC, but I've read so many committee reports I may have them confused) about the June load forecasts and the predictions were that everything _should_ be fine. I also read another report on summer load projections, which also predicted minor problems, if any at all, since nuclear plants were expected to be back online after spring maintenance outages. I remember thinking in June, after the heat wave problems then, that the reports all mentioned being based on "average" conditions.

Perhaps there are more technical reports which address worst-case scenario (or non-average) predictions which I didn't see, but if there aren't, it certainly seems like something the industry should start tackling. In five years, we're going to think this summer's problems were small potatoes if even the "average" industry projections of load versus generation prove true. It would be to the industry's benefit to both look seriously at the worst-case potentialities and put more plans in motion to address them. I know there are some efforts underway but there's going to be an inevitable lag time and taking more decisive action now could help mitigate the length of that lag time. I also think individuals should either reconcile themselves to higher electric rates throughout the next decade, or get used to using less power. In one respect, it's actually a good thing the computer date problem is happening this year, before there's an even greater disparity between demand and generation! My prediction is that the industry is going to be between a rock and a hard place for quite a long while to come, with or without any Y2K failures.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 1999