ISO New England Pumps Up The Fuel Oil Again During Winter Storm

New England seems unable to reduce its reliance on fuel oil to generate electricity during times of peak usage. This weekend provided another clear example of how the region’s much-hyped clean energy planning continues to fail to make real inroads when it really counts during severe winter weather events.

Last January 17 I wrote a piece about the fact that the grid that provides electricity to the New England states had relied on fuel oil, an archaic power source little used in most of the rest of the United States, for 24% of its generating capacity in the peak hours of January 16. But the new England grid far surpassed that percentage on Saturday, December 24, as reported by Bloomberg. On that day, fuel oil generated as much as a whopping 40% of overall electricity during peak hours, as severe weather conditions forced solar and wind generating capacity largely offline and utilities resorted to fuel switching from natural gas as gas prices spiked.

As was the case in January, New England’s utility customers had the pleasure of paying some of the highest rates in the country to avoid freezing in the dark, as spot electricity prices rose to more than $1800 per megawatt hour during peak times. Grid operator ISO New England also attributed the spike in fuel oil usage to a limited ability to import electricity from other regions as power demand spiked all over the country. ISO New England declared a level 1 emergency and asked customers to conserve electricity during the worst of the freeze event.

As of this writing, at 8:00 a.m. CT on Monday, fuel oil is still providing 29% of the grid’s generating capacity:

It is also key to note that, while the chart above indicates that “renewables” are providing 8% of the generation mix, only a little over half of that comes from wind and solar. The rest comes from a mix of burning carbon-generating trash and wood, along with renewable natural gas recovered from landfills:

Such heavy usage of fuel oil is a unique feature of the New England grid in the U.S., as policymakers have focused incentives and subsidies in recent years on the build-out of intermittent wind and solar capacity at the expense of investing in new nuclear or dispatchable thermal capacity powered by natural gas and coal. The use of fuel oil in any significant way fell out of favor half a century ago in other parts of the United States, as emissions regulations increased in their severity and coal became a far cheaper source of power generation.

Around the rest of the world, fuel oil remains a favored source of generation in isolated island regions like the Caribbean and across the island nations of the Indian Ocean, where alternatives are scarce and very costly. One major reason for New England’s ongoing situation has been the blockade set up by the federal government and New York State on the building of new natural gas pipeline capacity to bring in gas from the nearby Marcellus shale region, the most prolific natural gas play in the United States.

New England states are also prevented from importing domestic natural gas in the form of LNG by the archaic provisions of the Jones Act, which restricts movement of any goods from one domestic port to another to U.S.-flagged ships staffed by U.S. crews. The lack of U.S.-flagged LNG tankers results in a steady flow each winter of foreign vessels carrying high-priced LNG cargoes into Boston Harbor from countries like Qatar, Algeria and even Russia.

Like the rest of the United States, the ability to permit and build new nuclear fission generating capacity has been heavily restricted in New England since the incident at Three Mile Island took place 43 years ago.

During major weather events like the one that hit New England over the weekend, natural gas becomes increasingly scarce and costly. Both wind and solar, still lacking the long-promised but still un-delivered stationary battery back up capacity, invariably drop to extremely low output levels despite their big nameplate numbers, and utilities that operate dual fuel plants make the choice of switching to burning fuel oil as a cost-saving measure.

Because of the design of the New England grid, fuel oil is the reserve emergency fuel source by default. Thus, we end up seeing days like Saturday, when this archaic generation fuel source provides more than twice as much electricity than any other source on the grid. It is fair to point out that this situation exists entirely due to choices made by policymakers in the New England states and the federal government. None of this just happened organically.