Curtailment Curtailment: When We Throw Away Clean Energy As we approach the end of another shoulder season — a period of lower demand and higher transmission outages — it's a good time to explain curtailment, a crucial yet often controversial aspect of today's grid operations.
SPP SPP Expansion Provides a Blueprint for the Future of the Grid The U.S. power grid is so complex that trivial changes are hard to comprehend and harder to implement. Yet, a recent announcement by the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) is closer to historic than trivial, making it a good case study for a more integrated and efficient grid.
net load Net Load Ramps: How Texas and California Incorporate Renewables The era of renewables marks a substantial shift in the dynamics of power grids. Today’s dispatchable generation isn’t just operating to meet the relatively predictable slope of demand, but to seamlessly match the ever-shifting puzzle edge of net load.
ancillary services Two Weeks of Firsts in Texas: ECRS and New Records Recently, the Texas grid has caught the attention of the energy industry due to unseasonably warm temperatures and ERCOT's release of a new market product, the first in over a decade.
NYISO Forest Fires Challenge Solar Forecast Models in New York Last week's wildfires in Canada produced a significant amount of smoke that drifted into the United States. How did this affect the electrical grid?
nuclear What Happens When a Nuclear Plant Suddenly Shuts Off? Nearly instantaneously, a significant portion of nuclear generation in New England disappeared. This abrupt outage created measurable effects across the grid that we explore in this post.
batteries Balancing Act in California While CAISO continues to set renewable generation records, there are worrying signs of regional balkanization of flexibility which could increase fossil fuel generation in an era when many BAs in the West are trying to do the opposite.
