More information is emerging about why Duke Energy couldn't get power to buy as temperatures dropped and demand spiked on Christmas Eve, and whether it was linked to the type of damage Duke experienced at the power plant.
Duke hopes to buy power from its northern neighbor, PJM Interconnection, which operates the power grid from northeastern North Carolina to Michigan. But PJM reported this week that it lost 23.2% of its production capacity due to storms and cold weather. So he didn't have extra power in his hand.
"Frankly, while many assets are performing well, forced generator outages are unacceptable," PJM senior vice president of operations Mike Bryson said Wednesday at a meeting of the company's Market Implementation Committee .
PJM said it plans to levy $1 billion to $2 billion in fines against factory operators for the shortage.
Unlike Duke, JPM does not operate its own power plants. The company manages power distribution for independent factory owners. Like Duke, most of the plant's problems stem from cold-related failures at coal- and gas-fired power plants. Network operators also said cold weather reduced natural gas production and pipeline supplies.
PJM said in a filing on Wednesday that it lost a total of 46,000 MW of generating capacity. About 70% is wasted for natural gas production and 16% for coal production. Other outages are listed as "other," including nuclear, oil, wind and solar, PJM said in the filing.
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Duke Energy officials notified North Carolina regulators that they have firm or tentative contracts to buy 650 megawatts of power by Christmas Eve from PJM and other locations to increase capacity. But he was not there when needed.
"As we go through these events of the past, we're left without a generation to harvest. We don't have the purchasing power that we have," Duke's Sam Holman said Jan. 3 before the North Carolina Public Utilities Commission.
This, along with reduced generation capacity due to the power plant failure, forced Duke to begin the shutdown on the morning of December 24. The outage affected half a million customers in the Carolinas. The power outage was expected to last only 15 to 30 minutes, but when an automated system that shut down and failed to restore power, many customers were left without power for hours.
PJM did not specify which factories were out of service.
"PJM does not isolate which generators are down," spokeswoman Susan Bueller said Thursday.
PJM also receives power from a pumped hydroelectric dam. But power shortages "limit the ability to replenish dam levels for pumped hydroelectric storage before the morning peak of Dec. 24."
Like Duke Energy, forecaster PJM underestimated power demand during storms and cold weather by 10%. It comes as temperatures drop on Christmas Eve and demand for heating rises across PJM.
PJM's power shortage does not cause blackouts, but the utility asks customers to conserve power during outages.
Environmental groups have taken advantage of the reduction in output from coal and gas power plants during extreme weather on Christmas Eve. Tom Rutigliano of the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in a post last week: "Once again, we have learned that we cannot rely on gas and coal in extreme weather conditions. They are unreliable and system reliability will suffer as network operators" . Gas and coal prices continue to be exorbitant".
PJM says this week's report is preliminary. Please continue to review performance and forecasts during the holiday period and look forward to reporting results and recommendations in April.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Electric Reliability Council announced a joint investigation into power outages and facility failures in December.
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