Grid Status

Data centers have altered the trajectory of demand growth in the PJM Interconnection. Here’s why it’s at center of the national energy conversation. This trend is best understood through exploration of Dominion Energy, which has been grappling with data center deployments for far longer than OpenAI's ChatGPT has been available. With some of the largest companies on earth now driving the livelihood and resuscitation of local nuclear power it’s worth taking a closer look at Dominion through both their 2024 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) filed with the Virginia State Corporation Commission last week as well as market data from PJM available on Grid Status. Both the grand ambitions of FAANGs and Dominion’s planning exist within the milieu of PJM, a market with no shortage of regulatory obstacles in recent years. From interconnection redesign delaying a vast swathe of projects to capacity market overhauls fraught with delays and challenges, meeting the challenge of demand growth (AI-fueled or not) in an era of change is no easy task. Whether Northern Virginia’s data centers, a Mid-Atlantic nuclear revival, and Virginia Beach’s offshore wind represent change nationally, or quirks of local geography and history remains to be seen. Track this and more at Grid Status: https://lnkd.in/ewVdbz3r

Yesterday, both the Texas and California grids hit new all-time highs for battery discharge within hours of each other. ERCOT topped 4,000 MW for the first time, while California ISO slightly bumped up the record it set this summer. Track these records and more on our site: https://lnkd.in/gAiHJGcq

Last week saw widespread heat in the West. Two years ago, similar conditions may have caused emergency conditions in California, but this year was smooth sailing. Have resources on the ground in California ISO finally caught up to California’s ambition? In the deck below, we take a look at how high temperatures in CAISO led to high load, generator derates, and import cuts — exacerbated by growing wildfires. Despite this, real-time action in the market was mild and operators neither declared an EEA nor called for conservation. This is a far cry from the peak week in 2022 and other years in recent memory. One of the biggest changes in CAISO is the growing prevalence and coordination of battery storage resources. Batteries shifted a substantial chunk of cheap solar generation into the evening peak — so much so that bids came down substantially from day-ahead to real-time, likely lowering the cost of generators on the margin. While this bodes well for future tight conditions in the West, outstanding questions remain. In particular, the loss of capacity near load due to ambient-temperature-induced derates remains an issue. The Western Interconnection is in a moment of change. Over the next several years, multiple new market constructs are likely to be implemented as CAISO expands services and the Southwest Power Pool moves more fulsomely beyond the Eastern Interconnection. With these expansions will come new challenges with new solutions, but this past week demonstrated breakthrough success that will likely be in play for decades to come.

This past week, a heat wave across the Eastern United States demonstrated the crucial role of coordination between interconnected operators for reliability. Let’s take a look. The Eastern Interconnection successfully navigated a period of widespread heat, benefiting from east-west timing disparities in peak temperatures to avoid serious operational challenges. During tight conditions, grid operators follow a defined sequence of events to bring additional generators online and manage regional commitments. Region-wide stressful conditions pushed grid operators to prepare for emergency conditions, including the first EEA1 of the summer for PJM Interconnection, an EEA1 in Southwest Power Pool, and a Max Generation Alert in Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO). Some highlights: - Timing of peak heat from west to east varied, leading to effective interregional cooperation - MISO acted as a pivot by its seams-heavy position between SPP, PJM, and the southeast - Regionally, Net Load and risk peaked on August 27th, aligning with reliability actions. - MISO was a net importer of power from PJM through the event. A Max Gen Alert in MISO alleviated pressure on PJM, which needed to retain internal generation - SPP experienced high load and very low wind output. SPP’s net and gross load converged as wind underperformed Interestingly, none of these regions hit record demand levels during this period. SPP set a new peak last year, but PJM and MISO have not surpassed their all-time highs, which remain more than a decade old.

Yesterday was a record-setting day in ERCOT. Let’s break it down. 1. ERCOT hit an all-time record for demand, but thanks to strong solar generation throughout the day, prices remained under control, even during the peak. 2. As the sun set and solar output decreased, ERCOT set a new record for net load—the demand that must be met by dispatchable sources. It’s important to note that high prices correlate more with high net load than gross load. 3. Battery storage shattered its previous discharge record, sending 20% more power to the grid than previous record set the the day before as ERCOT fully released ECRS. 4. We saw some of the highest sustained real-time energy prices of the year, with the Hub average 15-minute SPP nearly reaching the $5,000 bid cap. The ORDC played a role in maintaining these high prices. 5. ERCOT deployed nearly all available capacity without any reliability issues. Despite a significant drop in PRC and SCED capacity within 5 minutes, 2,000 MW of extra capacity released from ECRS made a critical difference. ERCOT's performance under these challenging conditions showcases the evolving dynamics of our grid and the critical role of all resources in keeping the system balanced.

Predicting coincident peak demand intervals is a multi-million dollar business. Here's how it's getting more complex. As the grid has evolved, avoiding these peak demand intervals that are a significant portion of overall costs has become dependent on market interactions between large flexible loads, batteries, and solar generation. For example, this summer in ERCOT has yet to hit the same demand peaks as last year, but it hasn’t stopped the 4CP program from heating up after many folks identified the wrong day as the coincident peak. With high heat and minimal precipitation in the outlook for the foreseeable future, Texas is likely to see high demand and possibly set coincident peaks for both August and September over the next few weeks. In our latest blog, we leverage data and tools from Grid Status, to explore how the changes in ERCOT are leading to unexpected outcomes when predicting coincident peaks. Read more on our blog: https://lnkd.in/gSV8vjFY If you are a large load, check out this example dashboard to monitor ERCOT 4CP load in real time: https://lnkd.in/gc6zJTNy

If you’ve used Grid Status recently, you probably noticed our new Nodal Price Map. In our latest blog, we provide an in-depth guide to locational marginal prices (LMPs) and how to use our map to analyze them. Since founding Grid Status, we have normalized the different reporting schemes of the ISO/RTOs to provide LMP data for more than 60,000 pricing points. With national coverage of LMP data, we were well-positioned to build what we believe is the first-ever public map of wholesale electricity prices that covers every American market. Our goal was straightforward: to create one place that consolidates real-time and historical wholesale electricity prices across the country. In this post, we: 1. Explain the data behind this map 2. Walk through the meaning of each component of LMP 3. Demonstrate how to use the map to analyze transmission congestion around Data Center Alley in PJM Read the post: https://lnkd.in/gAaN9RPQ

Some demand response action in NYISO today. As load rose, the ISO deployed Special Case Resources (SCRs), a long-standing program. SCRs are a reliability-based demand response program whose participants are able to sell into NYISO's capacity auctions, but not the energy or ancillary markets. State-wide activations are particularly obvious in the North and West zones as the resources in those areas represent a relatively larger portion of zonal demand. In this case some congestion followed the activation which caused price separation - particularly severe in the North Zone. It was another hot day and load was beating the day-ahead forecast, but this activation occurred while load was slightly under 28 GW, well shy of the ~31.5 GW coincident peak load forecast ahead of the summer. Track real-time conditions and more at https://lnkd.in/g4S6MuQB

This morning, a nuclear unit in Texas unexpectedly tripped. What happens when a large generator suddenly goes offline? Using data on Grid Status, we take a look at how pooled resources and advanced operational strategies prevent significant disruptions when shocks occur. Immediately, grid frequency declined. An excursion below critical levels required a fast response by ERCOT to ensure stability of the grid. In this case, ERCOT swiftly deployed ancillary services, including a significant amount of batteries providing ECRS, to boost the frequency back to normal. Electricity prices responded shortly after the trip. There is out of the ordinary negative price action at the STP nuclear plant pointing to it as the likely source of the outage. To compensate for the outage, some generation must be increased and some decreased. Price signals then reconfigure the generation output in West Texas at 7:40am CT, causing some units to increase output and some to curtail. Is data like this important to you? See this data and more on Grid Status.

Excited to see data from Grid Status front and center in The Wall Street Journal today. This time in an article about investors pouring billions into adding huge batteries to the grid. We may not be building these massive projects ourselves, but we are proud to provide data that can help investors, regulators, and the general public make informed decisions towards the clean and reliable grid of the future. If that mission excites you, please reach out. We're looking to add a couple software engineers and go-to-market specialists to our team.