Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Photo by Brian Zinchuk
The Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which runs from the Canadian border south of Estevan to the Texas Panhandle, issued a grid alert which covered its entire footprint for most of Monday, Aug. 21.
“SPP is issuing a Conservative Operations Advisory for its entire SPP Balancing Authority footprint in the eastern interconnection effective 11:00 a.m. CT Monday, August 21 with an anticipated end of 9:00 p.m. CT Monday, August 21. SPP is also extending the previously declared Resource Advisory to remain in effect through an anticipated end at 8:00 p.m. CT on Friday, August 25,” the SPP said in a release Monday morning.
However, it added, “None of these advisories require the public to conserve energy. Individuals should contact their local utility for details specific to their area.”
This is in contrast to several grid alerts that have been issued in Alberta over the last year due to low wind conditions while temperatures were frigid. In those situations, the Alberta Electric System Operator actually tweeted pictures of a dishwasher, suggesting people should not use high-load electrical appliances during supper.
“These advisories have been issued to raise awareness of potential threats to reliability among entities responsible for operating transmission and generation facilities,” it said. “Conservative Operations is being declared due to continued high load, due to extreme heat, and low wind forecast.”
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The SPP is significant because SaskPower is in the process of increasing its 150 megawatt interconnect with the SPP to 650 megawatts by 2027, at a cost in excess of a billion dollars in tariffs totaled over 20 years. The greatly enhanced interconnect will be larger in capacity than even the largest of SaskPower’s generating stations, such as Boundary Dam (coal, Estevan), Queen Elizabeth (natural gas, Saskatoon) or Poplar River (coal, Coronach). In addition to allowing increased every day sales of power across the border, its purpose is also to allow for SaskPower and the SPP to help each other in times of need, such as the scenario on Monday.
Southwest Power Pool
A “Conservative Operations Advisory” is declared when SPP determines there is a need to operate its system conservatively based on weather, environmental, operational, terrorist, cyber or other events.
Beyond that, things start getting more serious, where emergency alerts can be declared as all available resources have been committed to meet obligations, and the SPP is at risk of not meeting required operating reserves. That did not happen on Monday.
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