May 2, 2019   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Annual Assessment Forecasts Adequate Electricity Supplies for this Summer

The Northeast Power Coordinating Council, Inc. (NPCC) today released the results of its annual summer reliability assessment. The assessment concludes, based on thousands of simulations covering a wide range of system and weather conditions that the NPCC Region will have an adequate supply of electricity this summer.

The overall NPCC forecast for coincident electricity peak demand has decreased by about 600 MW from last year’s forecast to 103,548 MW.

“This continues an almost decade long trend of overall flat or declining peak demand forecast due to energy efficiency and conservation initiatives as well as the significantly increasing role of behind-the-meter photovoltaic resources in New England and New York,” said Edward Schwerdt, President and CEO of NPCC.

Since last summer, NPCC’s installed net capacity has increased by approximately 2,200 MW to 163,538 MW. Capacity additions consist of the Napanee natural gas-fired unit in Ontario and dual-fuel capability units located in New England. The remaining new capacity consists of primarily wind and solar units in Ontario, New York and New England. Going forward, the effective and efficient integration of distributed energy resources (such as energy storage) will be an increasingly important part of the overall reliability and security objectives of NPCC.

“In addition, the expected increase in NPCC’s capacity offsets the planned retirement of the Pilgrim nuclear plant in New England and the long-term outage of the Cayuga coal unit in New York,” stated Schwerdt.

For New York City, New York State, New England and Ontario, an adequate supply of electricity is forecast. The winter peaking Québec and Canadian Maritime Provinces are expected to meet forecasted electricity demand by a wide margin.

The assessment considered an array of severe system conditions including the impact of: 1) extended maintenance; 2) reductions in demand-response programs; 3) reductions in the ability to import power from neighboring Regions; 4) transmission constraints; 5) unavailability or inoperability of key facilities regardless of cause; and 6) extreme weather characterized by wide-spread and prolonged heat waves with high humidity and temperatures.

Established operating procedures are available, if needed, to maintain reliability for the unlikely simultaneous occurrence of severe system and extreme weather conditions.

A summary of the NPCC 2019 Summer Reliability Assessment is available at: www.npcc.org on the Home Page under the “Latest News” header.

About NPCC

The NPCC geographic region includes the State of New York and the six New England states as well as the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Québec and the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Overall, NPCC covers an area of nearly 1.2 million square miles, populated by more than 56 million people. In total, from a net energy for load perspective, NPCC is approximately 46% U.S. and 54% Canadian. With regard to Canada, approximately 70% of Canadian net energy for load is within the NPCC Region.

One of NPCC’s responsibilities is to coordinate international electric power grid reliability for Northeastern North America. Toward that end, NPCC annually performs comprehensive seasonal assessments of electricity supply and demand reliability for eastern Canada, New England and the City and State of New York. These assessments require months of detailed preparation and are performed with the participation of regional electricity power grid operators and planners.