Skip to main content

How Nuclear Energy Keeps the Grid Up in Extreme Weather

Matt Wald
The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

Over the past ten years, two of the power grid’s worst ten days were during the polar vortex of January 2014, and for 2014 alone, four of the top ten were caused by the vortex, according to a new report by the group that enforces reliability standards on the high-voltage grid.

Weather-related challenges to the grid can be divided into two categories: the ones that disrupt load and the ones that disrupt generation. Thunderstorms, snowstorms, derechos and similar events that tear down local power lines are in the first category, and extreme temperatures are in the second. The distinction is important because if the power line in your neighborhood is taken out by a snow-covered tree, then it doesn't matter if the power plant is still running, and the system can get by on many fewer power plants as load disappears. But in a polar vortex, transmission and distribution is intact and it is the performance of the generators that is crucial.

With the grid up and demand rising, nuclear energy did its job in 2014.
The report, “The State of Reliability 2015,” pointed out that in the vortex, temperatures dropped 20 to 30 degrees below normal, and 49 cities set new low temperature records. “Key factors during the event included fuel deliverability issues, natural gas pipeline outages, gas service interruptions, frozen electricity and gas equipment, and other extreme cold weather operating challenges,’’ the report said.

And the wholesale price of electricity shot through the roof – which this report didn't mention, because the group that prepared it, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, is concerned with the engineering details of keeping the lights on, not the financial details of what happens when the gas transmission system can’t feed the power plants, factories and home heating systems.

The system mostly scraped through the challenge, largely because of the generators that ran without difficulty, nuclear reactors, which had their fuel already on site, and thus did not suffer from gas pipeline constraints or frozen coal piles, or the inability of barges to bring fuel over ice-choked rivers. Their performance was an example, mostly unappreciated, of the strength that the grid draws from its diversity.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should