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SkiingAway t1_ja4ye6j wrote

Reply to comment by cwalton505 in New England grid operator says small-scale solar is driving down electricity demand on some days by TurretLauncher

(Not the previous poster.)

When we are short on Natural Gas we switch over to oil-fired generation. New England does not have the pipeline capacity to meet demand in major cold snaps.

Traditionally, this has been partially met with LNG imports into Boston (and to a lesser extent, New Brunswick). These are less available and while never cheap, are drastically more expensive now.

Last winter and this winter we have had brief periods where the grid is running on 25-40% oil.

This is not the same as saying that total yearly generation is that much oil, we're talking hours or days, so it's a small % of overall generation....although a slightly larger share of costs, since it's a very expensive power source.

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realbusabusa t1_ja53o80 wrote

And significantly more carbon, all for lack of pipeline capacity. It is absurd.

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cwalton505 t1_ja58ooh wrote

Yeah and take a look at the previous posters % claim. And I'd still be surprised if we had GTEs powering 25% oil at any single instance

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SkiingAway t1_ja657uz wrote

I mean, that's very easy to prove correct, since it's happened recently.

We hit 40% oil-fired generation on Christmas Eve this year, and prices spiked to over $2,000/MWh around that time.

Bloomberg article (archive link since paywall): https://archive.is/LnFvP

You could also just go straight to the source: https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/. "Resource Mix Graph" and then pick 12/24/22 and look at it. At peak, we were generating 6.5GW from oil that day.

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