The photo is sourced from Reuters
The highest electricity demand was registered at 07:00 PM on February 3 and February 4, when electricity consumption was 19.5 thou MWh per hour and 19.3 thou MWh per hour respectively and approached the historic maximum of 22.8 thou MWh per hour achieved in January 2004. This surge in demand was caused by abnormal cold spell: in those days, the ambient temperature in Boston went down to minus 23 degrees Celsius, the historic minimum from 1957, and in the Northern New England – down to minus 32 degrees Celsius.
To satisfy the grown consumption local operators of energy systems utilised all the available generating capacities including 5,000 MW of oil-fired power plants and the only one coal-fired power plant Merrimack of 482 MW capacity in New Hampshire.
After it got warmer on February 5, generation at these power plants stopped. However, in future they will continue to perform as electricity demand stabilisers, especially with account of the fact that the cold spell usually results in the increase of gas consumption by households, which may make it difficult for power plants to access gas. According to EIA, during the period of December 21 – 26 in 2022, the time of the previous cold spell, the daily demand for gas in the residential and commercial sectors of the USA reached 1.71 bn cubic metres per day exceeding the similar metric for gas-fired power plants (1.06 bn cubic metres per day) by 60%.
Oil-fired power plants are the third biggest generation source in the US among generators using fossil fuel. According to EIA, in 2022 they accounted for 0.4% of total generation, while coal-fired and gas-fired plants – for 39.8% and 19.5% respectively.
