polar vortex
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Commentary
Storm Readiness Saves Lives: Utilities and Testing Are the Real Digital Twins
Natural calamities challenge businesses and create problems with customer experience (CX). How can a utility demonstrate the desired experience attributes such as speed, quality, consistency, and so on at the same or even at a higher level after a catastrophe? Following a winter that saw record-breaking bomb cyclones in the northern Pacific. and the biggest […]
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News
Gas Now Tops Coal in PJM, but Nuclear Still No. 1
A report from an independent market monitor for PJM Interconnection shows that natural gas-fired power generation topped coal-fired output in PJM in 2018, the first time that gas has topped coal in the history of the largest U.S. grid operator. The “2018 State of the Market” report from Monitoring Analytics LLC, which includes Volume 1 […]
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News
Polar Vortex Tests Resiliency of U.S. Power System
Brutally cold temperatures in the midwestern and northeastern U.S. spurred grid operator alerts as natural gas demand has surged, power prices have soared, and there have been forced generator outages. The polar vortex, an extreme cold event characterized by back-to-back cold fronts, has so far prompted states of emergency in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan. On […]
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Infographics
THE BIG PICTURE: A Cold Comparison
The “bomb cyclone,” a winter storm that descended on much of the eastern U.S. from December 27, 2017, to January 8, 2018, renewed the raging debate about resiliency and prompted flashbacks of the “polar vortex,” a similar deep freeze that transpired in January 2014 and was compounded by the loss of 82 GW nationwide for various reasons. […]
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O&M
ISOs, RTOs Outline Winterization Efforts
In presentations to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the nation’s regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) on Sept. 17 outlined measures they are taking to prevent issues if faced with extreme weather this winter. The measures are to prevent widespread generation outages as occurred during the Jan. 6–7, 2014, polar vortex. […]
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Gas
NERC’s Polar Vortex Review Bares Natural Gas Dependency, Equipment Vulnerabilities
Despite record low temperatures and widespread generation outages during the polar vortex, bulk power system reliability was maintained, says the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) in a newly released analysis of the extreme cold weather event that engulfed most of the nation this January. The Jan. 6–7, 2014, weather condition that resulted in temperatures […]
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Infographics
THE BIG PICTURE [INFOGRAPHIC]: A Generation Freeze
Before the polar vortex earlier this year, several severe cold weather events had presented comparable power generation operational challenges. POWER ranks those events here in terms of loss of generation capacity. Common themes observed in both severe and lesser cold weather incidents involve constraints on natural gas fuel supplies to generating plants, and generating unit […]
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