Though summer is winding down, it is still hot. If the last four years are any indication, 2019 will also be making an entry in the record books. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2018 had the fourth warmest year ever recorded, behind 2016, 2015 and 2017.
Hotter temperatures matter in the energy sector because summer months stress the electrical grid significantly more than winter months. According to the recent 2018 U.S. National Climate Assessment—a report generated by dozens of federal agencies and hundreds of scientists—“the electrical grid handles virtually the entire cooling load, while the heating load is distributed among electricity, natural gas, heating oil, passive solar and biofuel.”
Last month, the heat wave from July 15-22 across the Midwest to the Atlantic coast brought extremely high temperatures. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, this “resulted in elevated demand to the electricity to power air conditioners, dehumidifiers, fans and other cooling equipment,” which led to a peak electricity demand of 704 gigawatts, a record in itself.
The good news is nearly all 97 of the nuclear reactors around the country ran at 100 percent. During the recent heat wave, nuclear power generated the most electricity of all clean energy sources and the third-most power overall. Nuclear provides reliable electricity around-the-clock, a major asset when the grid is stressed with increased demand for cooling.
Now what happens if electricity demand outpaces the supply? That is exactly what happened two weeks ago in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ (ERCOT) service territory, which includes over 25 million customers and represents over 90 percent of Texas’ electric load.
A heat wave across the state skyrocketed the demand while supply could not keep up, forcing ERCOT to issue a critical Energy Emergency Alert Level 1, calling on “all available power supplies.” This raised power prices from approximately $19 per megawatt-hour in the morning to over $9,000 per megawatt-hour in midafternoon, bringing extremely inefficient and carbon dioxide intensive plants on line. Huge spikes in power prices like these are a good indication of the electric grid becoming unreliable. The next level of alerts, Energy Emergency Alert 2, could have led to rotating outages in the middle of a heat wave.
Without nuclear power providing around-the-clock reliable electricity, the grid would have been further stressed and power prices would have been higher. When summer brings extreme heat, nuclear provides reliable, clean electricity to the grid to keep you cool.
