The regional grid is ready for winter

The nation’s largest grid operator says good preparation and mild weather ought to be enough to get customers in 13 states through the winter.

PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission operator that oversees the electric transmission system from Pennsylvania south to North Carolina and west to Illinois, said it expects to have 177,628 megawatts of power available this winter, well above the forecasted demand of 131,720 MW.

Demand for power in winter 2014–15 topped out at 143,295 MW, about 8 percent higher than PJM expects this year. Federal forecasters say most of the country is expected to see milder weather in the coming months, with the number of heating-degree days falling by about 10 percent in some of PJM’s territory.

PJM has put new procedures into place to avoid a repeat of winter 2013-2014, when more than 20 percent of generation was idled because of extreme weather. “PJM has taken many steps to reinforce generator readiness and to continue to improve coordination with natural gas pipelines, a key source for a large portion of the generation fleet,” said Michael Kormos, executive vice president and chief operations officer of Valley Forge, Pa.-based PJM.

Among steps it is taking this year:

• Studying the impact of higher load levels and higher generator outage rates;
• Improving communication between natural gas and electric utility industries; and
• Making winter generation testing available to units that had not run prior to November on either primary or alternate fuel.