Wildfire Smoke Triggered New England Grid Emergency

(Bloomberg) -- Smoke from Canada’s wildfires was to blame for a power-equipment shutdown that briefly led to a grid emergency in New England Wednesday night, along with an accompanying surge for electricity prices. 

Heat and smoke from the fires in the Baie James region of Quebec triggered an automated system that shut Hydro-Québec’s Phase-2 line, Lynn St-Laurent, a company spokeswoman, said in an email. The automation works to protect the equipment. 

The transmission line is a key conduit for moving hydropower into New England, and its outage pushed the six-state grid stretching from Maine to Connecticut into a low-level emergency for about four hours on the evening of July 5. Spot electricity prices briefly jumped to more than $2,700 a megawatt-hour, or more than 20 times the cost that had been locked in the day-ahead market.

“Our bulk transmission infrastructure has not suffered any damage as a result of the forest fires,” St-Laurent said. The increased intensity and frequency of forest fires in North America, which are tied to climate change, are “a clear reminder that we need to accelerate every effort towards transitioning away from the burning of fossils fuels for electricity generation,” she said. 

Canada’s record wildfire season may just getting be started, with higher-than-normal wildfire activity expected to continue into August. At the same time, extreme heat during the US summer is expected to keep power demand high as more electricity is used to cool homes and businesses. That combination could leave the grid vulnerable to future problems. 

Wednesday’s incident came just as soaring temperatures prompted people to crank up their air conditioners, and electricity demand came in stronger than expected. 

The equipment shut at about 6 p.m Eastern time, halting power flows on the line that had earlier in the afternoon been delivering more than 1 gigawatt, enough to power more than 750,000 homes typically, according to grid operator ISO New England Inc. The grid went into the lowest level of emergency to tap reserves to meet higher-than-expected use as temperatures hit a high of 88F (31C).

Oil-fired generation, typically used as a last resort to keep the grid stable, popped online, providing as much as 988 megawatts at 7:10 p.m.

The supply that came in to replace Canadian power was enough to keep the grid running without a need to appeal to consumers to conserve. The emergency ended at 10 p.m. 

The last time the grid had a supply deficiency was Dec. 24, 2022, when a winter storm strained grids across the East Coast.

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