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Some ComEd customers woke up on Tuesday to a text message alerting them to higher-than-expected power prices. However, ComEd was far from the only region experiencing major price spikes.
Power prices across the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection (PJM) footprint – the Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) that manages supply, demand, and prices across 13 states – reached as high as $3600/MWh shortly after 7 a.m. Eastern Time, with Locational Marginal Prices (LMPs) across the whole hour averaging over $800/MWh.
Source: Yes Energy’s PowerSignals Analytic Price Map
For context, PJM power prices at that time of day had been averaging $50/MWh through the first week of April.
Reasons for the price volatility include colder temperatures across the entire market combined with low output from wind farms. Temperatures were 10 to 30 degrees lower than the previous week.
Source: Yes Energy’s PowerSignals Analytic Price Map. NWS Temperature Delta Data
In addition, wind generation dipped from 4.5 GW at midnight to 2.2 GW at 7:12am.
Source: Yes Energy’s PowerSignals Time Series Analysis
Neither the temperatures nor the wind output levels were extreme by themselves – temperatures during a recent winter storm went much lower. However, April is traditionally a milder month, which leads to power plant operators scheduling more routine maintenance at that time of year.
Comparing Yes Energy’s Live Power generation data from Tuesday morning to the same time of day on Friday reveals quite a few natural gas and coal plants running at significantly lower levels (highlighted in red), which likely indicates new generation outages.
Source: Yes Energy’s PowerSignals Analytic Price Map. Live Power Monitoring Data
With fewer plants already online, power price spikes are necessary to incentivize the remaining generators to increase their output to meet the heating load.
PowerSignals allows you to visualize Independent System Operator data such as nodes, nodal prices, transmission lines, generation and transmission outages, constraints, power plants, weather, and gas prices all on one map. Digging deeper, PowerSignals allows you to easily drill down into more detailed charts and tables.
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About the author: Isaac Lichlyter was a former day-ahead power trader for eight years in CAISO, ERCOT, and PJM. While trading, he used Yes Energy tools, including Yes Energy’s Live Power solution, to diagnose the drivers behind price movement in the market, and now he is helping clients understand how our tools can meet your needs.
