Fuel -The January 26 Winter Storms Intensity Meter.
Following up on the January ‘26 Winter Storms and Arctic Cold, we should look back on the amount and type of fuel burned. The burn was simply massive, well beyond anything we have seen for a summer heat-peaking event. Summer heat is almost entirely an electrical load event with fuel almost exclusively to generate power. There is a smattering of gas fired, and steam fed absorption chillers and absorption air conditioners (see Stone Mountain), but they are the exception instead of the rule. Heating, however, is often directly fired by a spectrum of fuels, including wood, that often compete with generation for fuel.
It’s a common misconception that electricity is “the energy”, and media conversations do not help. Electricity is the medium to move energy, but like hydraulic pressure, until energy is injected from another form, it remains inert. What makes electricity unique is the ability to convert the energy it transports into so many kinds of useful work. Because electricity is simply a transport device, this fuel conversation is so important.
Let’s break down the fuel burn during this January cold weather event.
Natural Gas: In January, the US burned on average 126.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/day), but it was the burn rates in the heart of the cold that were truly impressive. On January 21st the system moved 184 Bcf/day including exports; the domestic burn was 165 Bcf/day, with 50.4 Bcf/day going to the power sector for power generation. On that day, the US withdrew 71.4 Bcf from storage, supporting 40% of domestic deliveries that day. The event had a two-week major hit to storage. The week ending January 24th saw a 321 Bcf drawdown, the fourth largest in history, and the week ending January 30th saw a 360 Bcf drawdown, the largest ever recorded. Storage numbers went into the event 6% above the 5-year average and emerged from the other side at 5% below that average. It’s reported that the system lost about 8% of its production capacity due to freeze offs during the worst of the cold. A significant improvement over what was reported during Elliott. Note the significant delta between total gas burn and power sector gas burn. That delta is non-existent during a summer peaking event.
The coordination problems between the gas market and the power were evident again and still need a resolution. The gas market runs during weekday business hours and has yet to resolve the issue when powerplant fuels will need to be scheduled ad-hoc. Because Winter Storm Fern moved in on Friday evening with its cold air mass, there were several GW of generation in PJM left without the ability to schedule fuel and were therefore unavailable. PJM was forced to schedule gas 72 hours in advance to meet the gas nomination windows, well before the day ahead scheduling market closed. Non-firm gas curtailments were strongly enforced across the system. Read more on the subject in this REPORT. A resolution to these issues needs to be found, whether it’s a NERC like agency for gas, or bringing gas under the NERC umbrella.
Texas deserves a mention regarding gas. The Texas/Oklahoma system suffered significant freeze offs earlier in the month and continued to fight with freeze offs throughout this event. While the total numbers may be less than Appalachia, they make a much larger percentage of total capacity for the Texas gas system. Texas essentially got lucky; temperatures were cold, but not arctic. The problems from Uri with non-firm gas to powerplants have not been fixed. Texas is highly dependent on wind, which remained operational because the temperatures never reached critical levels. So if you see bragging about ERCOT being weatherproof, apply a healthy helping of salt.
Fuel Oil: Typically fuel oil isn’t a notable contributor to the lower 48 state power generation resource mix. The fuel oil burn was primarily located in the ISONE and NYISO regions with notable contribution in the PJM footprint. In ISONE, light fuel oil for power generation competes directly with home heating oil, a significant heating source in the region. Exact numbers on fuel oil burn are yet to be produced. ISONE has the most complete data with approximately one million barrels burned during the peak week split between HFO for boilers (3.2 GW) and distillate oil (2.3 GW) for CTs. ISONE oil capacity peaked at about 8GW for 35% of total capacity. NYISO reached 44% of oil and dual fuel capacity estimated to be 10 to 11 GW; actual fuel burn is not published. PJM operated 5.8GW of light oil CTs across 90 units cycling during the 36-hour peak period. I should note that NYISO is pretty tight with their data; a full report will come out in the coming months.
What this represents is a massive fuel oil burn off. An article in Coal Zoom reported that the two Northeast RTOs were burning 300,000 barrels of fuel oil a day, and some had resorted to burning Jet-A. This article is unsubstantiated, but plausible. You can find it HERE. These are not inventories that get replaced in a day or a week. HFO is easier because most of those units are waterway based and can receive fuel via ocean tanker of fuel barge. However, CT fuel may have to come by road-based tanker, which is a slow process. The CTs that have access to a rail siding are in a much better position.
Coal: Reports are that coal generation increased 31% over the week-on-week average for coal fired generation. This would mean many of these units burned well into their fuel piles — a 31% surge pushes stored coal inventories hard, particularly at plants that had deferred procurement expecting a mild winter. For hard numbers, that’s an increase of 60 GWh/day to 130 GWh/day across the event, representing about a 5,400 MW average increase in coal output. That’s 43 million short tons of coal for January, four million over the EIA forecast. Unlike gas, coal can’t be called up on the spot market — what’s in the pile is what you have.
So, if you start adding it all together, it was a huge hit to the nation’s fuel reserves. These burn rates are well over production and refinery rates, especially when you factor in domestic consumption. Another three or four weeks of cold at this level could have depleted our reserves and left us in a very bad spot. Unlikely yes, impossible no.
I hope this enlightens you to the amount of fuel needed to keep our nation running, and how close we actually are to the edge. Let me know your thoughts
A more general point I’d make is that these figures illustrate how precarious a renewables heavy grid will be.
The fact is there was coal, there was gas, there was fuel oil because we can store them, and store them by the TWh for extended periods. Eliminating them from the power generation mix begs the question: can we store enough electrical energy to meet a once a year, never mind a 1 in 100-year, event?
Add in the electricity needed to displace fossil fuels from the primary energy mix — fuel for transport, agriculture, industry and commerce — and the storage requirements to bridge a deep cold, low generation event become colossal. The US is fortunate in that it is larger than its weather systems; it wasn’t the whole US suffering, just parts of it. But building sufficient surplus capacity and interconnect that Texas could support the East Coast or California the Mid-West seems equally problematic.
There are two solutions: ignore climate change and pray that others suffer its effects but you don’t; or ditch renewables for the one stable zero-carbon generation we know, nuclear.
Storage optimizes use of pipeline capacity, shaving peaks in the winter and filling valleys in the summer. Interruptible and curtailable service contracts also optimize use of pipeline capacity.
The solution to issues caused by interruptible and curtailable services is pipeline and storage capacity additions. Firm service is more exdpensive because of the incremental investment required to provide it. Firm gas supply contracts are also more expensive than spot market purchases when there is spot market gas available.
New York is largely responsible for the unavailability of sufficient natural gas in New York and New England. Blocking pipeline construction and then blaming the transmission companies for not supplying the market is politics at its most revolting.