New York was caught off guard by the spring heat wave last week that pushed temperatures into the 90s for three straight days driving power demand up to summer levels at a time when as much as 10,415 MW of generation and a significant amount of transmission capacity was down for maintenance. Temperatures in the city hit record highs of near 90 on Tuesday, 95 on Wednesday and 92 on Thursday. Monday and Friday temperatures reached the 80s.

The New York Independent System Operator initiated an emergency demand response program in the southeastern portion of New York state on Wedneday and Thursday. Customers voluntarily reduced consumption in return for a payment of real-time energy costs. The ISO also cut 800 MW of exports to the PJM Interconnection in the afternoon on Thursday.

“All these measures we took were precautionary to maintain the operating reserve required,” NYISO spokesman Ken Klapp said on Thursday. “The dilemma that we’re facing is that there’s a lot of generator outages for maintenance and there are a couple 345 kV lines out of service also. Combined with the generator outages and some of these major transmission line outages, it was difficult to meet the load and the reserve requirement of 1,800 MW. Yesterday we hit 23,643 MW so it looks like we’re above that today. It’s not as hot. It just that we’ve had a three-day build up.”

The all-time peak demand record was reached last summer at 30,983 MW. But it’s the timing of this heat wave that caused problems for New York, Klapp noted. “There’s no way you can make the analogy [and say that New York will have problems this summer],” said Klapp. “The dilemma right now is not the load so much; it’s the fact that there’s an exorbitant amount of generation offline right now for maintenance.”

However, New Yorkers were warned last month of possible shortages this summer (see Power Market Today, March 28 ). The Long Island Power Authority and KeySpan Energy both warned that demand growth probably would push peak consumption to record levels this summer and that more power generation is needed to avoid shortages. In a report in late March, the NYISO said the state urgently needs new generating capacity over the next few years, “to avoid serious electricity shortages, improve air quality, facilitate economic growth and avert strong upward pressure on prices.”

Last Thursday, LIPA once again pleaded for its 1.1 million customers to cutback on power usage. The company also specifically asked large commercial customers to voluntarily curtail usage. Despite being cooler Thursday, demand was higher on the LIPA system but the reserve margin also was a little higher at about 400-500 MW from about 300 MW on Wednesday.

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