Air conditioners were working overtime early this week and that surging electricity demand put stress on the energy grid.
Southwest Power Pool, the regional transmission operator that serves 14 states in the central U.S., including parts of western, central and southern Missouri, issued an emergency alert Monday saying widespread high temperatures led to "tightening electric reliability."
"While SPP has enough generation available to meet demand and fulfill its reserve obligations, conditions exist that could put reserves at risk if they worsen,” the operator said in a news release.
Energy Emergency Alert Level 1 is the least severe of the national three-level advisory sent to power companies.
Southwest Power Pool is one of 10 regional transmission operators that act as a sort of air traffic controller for electricity.
“We're monitoring the grid round the clock, anticipating how much electricity is needed minute-by-minute to serve that entire 14-state region — and then we coordinate the operation of around 1,000 generating facilities,” said Derek Wingfield, Southwest Power Pool manager of communications and external affairs.
Wingfield said most alerts don’t require any action from the general public.
"When we see that conditions could threaten regional reliability — whether that's because of weather or other factors — we issue these escalating levels of advisories and alerts that signal to utilities and generators and transmission operators that we need to work together to take actions to mitigate those risks,” he said.
Temperatures were high in the entire 14-state service territory Monday. Additionally, wind farm output across the region was low.
“Throughout that period, we had enough electricity available to both meet demand and maintain operating reserves above real-time demand, but we knew that if conditions had continued to worsen it could have resulted in a more imminent threat to electric reliability,” Wingfield said.
Energy Emergency Alert 2 would prompt voluntary consumer power conservation and level three could result in planned outages.
At the same time, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, that serves 15 states in the Midwest and south, including the northeastern part of Missouri, issued “max gen alerts and warnings” Monday and Tuesday due to the above normal temperatures impact on energy demand.
“In the traditional Midwest region, these are unseasonably warm conditions, which means there's going to be an unusual demand for energy, which puts us in abnormal operating conditions,” said Brandon Morris, MISO communications advisor. “What we're experiencing right now is essentially the highest electricity demand we've seen of the summer season.”
MISO’s max gen alert is not a national energy emergency alert, but an advisory that allows the grid operator to tap into backup resources if necessary.
When electricity supply and demand are this close, the organization may ask large manufacturers in the service territory to conserve energy if possible and request that power companies postpone any planned outage or maintenance.
“If you can, delay your maintenance run today, so we can get through these tight operating conditions, so we can increase the amount of supply in order to serve the demand that we're seeing, because it's so high,” Morris said.
MISO’s alerts and warning expired Tuesday evening.
Increasingly, frequent severe weather adds stress to the energy grid, but farmland irrigation, expanded adoption of electric vehicles and residential heat pumps also contribute to high energy demand in the Midwest and central U.S., according to Wingfield.
