[Peakoil] Electrical Use Hits New Highs in Much of U.S.

[Keith Thomas]

Another item from the New York Times today:

A quote: "In most cases, the system operators surpassed not only 
previous records, but also the predictions they made in the spring for 
peak summer demand."

And another: “There are more people, more houses, those houses are 
bigger, there are more electronics in those houses, and they have 
bigger air-conditioning units. Computers, plasma televisions, video 
games, BlackBerrys, iPods — every new gadget you can think of has to be 
plugged in somewhere.”  More than any other factor, air-conditioning 
drives the increase.

And the clincher, with its poignant reflection on human weaknesses: 
"when the heat persists, people say, 'I was trying to conserve but I 
can’t take it anymore,' and then turn up the air-conditioner."

No info on what they are burning to generate all that electric power.

--------------------------------------------
Keith Thomas
www.evfit.com
--------------------------------------------

August 2, 2006

Electrical Use Hits New Highs in Much of U.S.
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and MATTHEW L. WALD


A smothering heat wave shattered records for electricity use across a 
wide swath of the country yesterday as utilities and government 
officials called for conservation and braced for even more strain on 
the power grid today.

Power systems held up well despite worries about overloaded plants, 
transformers or lines. But utility executives warned that the risk of 
breakdowns rises steadily as a heat wave wears on, and with today’s 
temperatures expected to top yesterday’s, with possible record highs 
along the East Coast, power companies were girding for a huge 
challenge.

Three independent system operators, agencies that manage regional grids 
for New York, the mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, set record highs for 
electricity demand yesterday, breaking records set just two weeks ago. 
New England was just shy of a record.

Experts say demand is rising faster than the ability to meet it, which 
over the long run could pose the risk of both local and regional 
failures.

New York City took extraordinary steps to cut consumption, including 
turning off the display lights on the Brooklyn Bridge and ordering the 
city’s jail on Rikers Island to use generators. Some leading businesses 
raised their thermostats after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered most 
city office buildings to do so.

Over all, the power grid east of the Rockies is fairly strong, experts 
say, in part because of changes made after the biggest blackout in 
North American history, in August 2003. Independent system operators 
and the control room engineers who monitor systems at utilities are 
better trained and better equipped than they were in 2003, and they are 
in closer touch with one another.

“At this point, everybody is on their toes,” said Stanley L. Johnson, a 
spokesman for the North American Electric Reliability Council, an 
industry group in Princeton, N.J.

As the throb of air-conditioners and generators has become the summer’s 
soundtrack, most striking is how fast the overall demand for power has 
climbed. In most cases, the system operators surpassed not only 
previous records, but also the predictions they made in the spring for 
peak summer demand.

PJM Interconnection, the system operator whose member utilities cover 
most of the country from the Hudson River to the Chicago area and as 
far south as North Carolina, oversaw delivery of about 144,000 
megawatts at its peak yesterday afternoon — up more than 10,000 
megawatts from the record set last summer. PJM said demand growth has 
been equivalent to adding another Baltimore and its suburbs each year.

The Long Island Power Authority in New York surpassed 5,600 megawatts 
yesterday for the first time and predicted more than 5,700 today — 10 
percent higher than the record set last year. “It’s an extraordinary 
growth,” said Richard M. Kessel, the chairman. “This is an 
extraordinary event, electrically.”

The New England and New York system operators said demand could push 
higher today, but it was expected to drop in the Midwest. At PJM, the 
concern was that power use would fall in the Ohio Valley and farther 
west, but climb along the Eastern Seaboard, putting added strain on the 
major transmission lines connecting the two regions.

“Tomorrow could be tricky, because if there’s significantly higher 
demand in the East, getting it to the East will really tax the 
transmission system,” Ray Dotter, a PJM spokesman, said yesterday. 
“We’ll still be sweating.”

Power demand has climbed much faster than predicted across the country 
since 2004, raising concerns about whether efforts to build new plants 
and transmission lines, and encourage conservation, will satisfy the 
nation’s appetite for electricity.

  At American Electric Power, which serves five million people in 11 
states, from Virginia to Ohio to Oklahoma, J. Craig Baker, the senior 
vice president for regulatory services, said that the heat wave “is 
stressing the transmission and distribution system considerably,” and 
that the industry needed to think seriously about how to reinforce it.

Projecting demand for electricity can be harder than predicting the 
stock market, but the North American Electric Reliability Council tries 
to do so each spring. In 2003 and 2004, actual growth in demand was 
smaller than anticipated, but last year’s peak demand exceeded 
projections by 1.7 percent. Because growth last year was so strong, the 
council predicted an 0.5 percent rise this year, a number that was 
clearly too small.

Jim Smith, a spokesman for the New York Independent System Operator, 
which oversees the state’s power markets and distribution, said: “There 
are more people, more houses, those houses are bigger, there are more 
electronics in those houses, and they have bigger air-conditioning 
units. Computers, plasma televisions, video games, BlackBerrys, iPods — 
every new gadget you can think of has to be plugged in somewhere.”

More than any other factor, air-conditioning drives the increase. “When 
it gets hot, I don’t say, ‘I want to crank up my lights,’ ” said 
Jonathan Cogan, a spokesman for the Energy Information Administration, 
a federal agency. “What I do is turn on my air-conditioner.”

In 1978, 56 percent of American households had air-conditioning. By 
2001, the most recent year for which government statistics were 
available, that figure had risen to 77 percent, and all evidence 
suggests that it has continued to climb since then.

Experts say that for now, at least, the long-distance power 
transmission system appears to be up to the challenge, though there is 
a constant threat of local distribution problems because persistent 
heat and the electricity surging through the lines can overwhelm 
equipment. That is what happened last month in parts of Queens that 
lost power for more than a week.

The reliability council has long advised utilities and system operators 
and set standards for operations and personnel training, but its 
recommendations were merely advisory, and investigations after the 2003 
blackout showed that they were not always followed. However, on July 
20, the government designated it as the electric reliability 
organization for the United States, a step allowed under the 2005 
energy bill, making its standards mandatory nationwide.

That designation is too recent to have had any impact on reliability, 
industry officials said. What has made a difference, though, is a 
national program of audits that began after the 2003 blackout, in which 
teams of utility experts review one another’s training standards and 
operating procedures.

The audits are intended to catch problems like those in Ohio that led 
to the 2003 collapse across much of the Northeast, the Midwest and 
parts of Canada: failure to trim trees that can catch transmission 
lines, inadequate training of operators, and computer systems that can 
malfunction without humans noticing.

To deal with the latest surge in demand, power companies and government 
officials called on businesses and residents to cut power use 
voluntarily — taking steps like raising thermostats, turning out lights 
and drawing blinds to keep out the sun. But in some cases, conservation 
measures went farther. The New York Independent System Operator invoked 
an existing program that cuts power to some of the biggest consumers 
around the state, “shedding” about 600 megawatts of demand — and yet 
the region still peaked far above last year’s record.

Higher demand also means bigger electric bills for consumers, in part 
because rates rise as demand increases. Consumption also tends to rise 
as heat waves go on, even if the peak temperatures are no longer 
increasing. Nighttime temperatures stay high, so air-conditioners are 
used more hours each day.

As Mr. Dotter, the PJM spokesman, said, when the heat persists, people 
say, “I was trying to conserve but I can’t take it anymore,” and then 
turn up the air-conditioner.


Copyright 2006  The New York Times Company
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