Extreme heat has forced the Southwest Power Pool to ask member utilities to make available all generation facilities needed to meet high demand expected to peak this coming Friday.
SPP declared a period of Conservative Operations for their entire 14-state region effective 11:00 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time Thursday through 7 p.m. Friday evening.
The need for the declaration is due to hot-weather conditions causing high electricity use expected to persist through an afternoon peak on July 30.
Looking ahead, SPP says it does not currently anticipate the need to request public conservation of energy or to direct controlled service interruptions, but the declaration informs SPP’s market participants they should make available all necessary generating resources to meet the high demand.
Officials with Nebraska Public Power District, which a member of the SPP, note that the power pool has issued a dozen declarations of Conservative Operations since January of 2019.
As illustrated in the graphic, a declaration of Conservative Operations precedes and is less severe than Energy Emergency Alerts like those SPP issued during the February 2021 winter weather event. During periods of Conservative Operations, no action is required of the pubic unless specifically directed by an individuals’ local utility.
Weather Alerts and Resource Alerts are communicated by SPP’s operators to our members to ensure they’re aware of conditions that could lead to reliability issues if they worsen. With the escalation to Conservative Operations, SPP signals there is further need to operate its system conservatively based on weather, environmental, operational, cyber or other events. To prevent conditions from worsening, SPP may commit generation to serve load earlier than during normal operations and ahead of standard day-ahead market processes. SPP sends specific instructions regarding conservative operation of generation and transmission facilities to its member utilities.
Remember, you can also check the general status of SPP’s regional system any time on the Current Grid Conditions page of SPP.org.
