Weather moves Southwest Power Pool to issue advisories for West, East footprints

Southwest Power Pool on Oct. 6 issued a conservative operations advisory, the last step before an Energy Emergency Alert, for its West balancing authority area and a resource advisory for its East BAA, but power markets showed no activity on the Intercontinental Exchange.

CustomWeather on Oct. 5 forecast temperatures to range from 8 to 20 degrees F above normal Oct. 7 across virtually all of SPP's West and East BAAs.

The West BAA advisory is from 10 am CT Oct. 6 until midnight Oct. 7, and the East BAA advisory is from noon CT Oct. 7 until 9 pm Oct. 8.

SPP said it declared the conservative operations advisory "due to potential forecast uncertainty, including higher than normal loads and outages, seasonally hot temperatures, and the potential for lower wind and solar."

The declaration covers SPP's westernmost footprint, which includes portions of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

"Conservative operations advisories are considered stable operating conditions and do not require the public to conserve energy or take any action, but are issued to raise awareness of potential threats to reliability among entities responsible for operating transmission and generation facilities," SPP said.

SPP previously declared resource advisories, the last step before a conservative operations advisory, for the West BAA for 2 pm CT Oct. 5 until midnight Oct. 7.

'Severe hot temperatures'

SPP said it declared the resource advisory for the East BAA "due to potential forecast uncertainty, the potential for higher than normal loads and severe (seasonal) hot weather."

"Forecasts indicate seasonally severe hot temperatures in some areas, which cause greater load, especially if they take place during peak hours," SPP said. "Wind and solar generation could potentially be lower than the expected forecast."

SPP's East BAA covers parts of the following 14 states in the Eastern Interconnection: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming.

Peakloads rising

SPP forecast the West BAA's load to approach 3.4 gigawatts Oct.6, up almost 12% from Sept. 29's 3 GW, and the East BAA's load to peak about 40.1 GW Oct. 8, up 9.7% from Oct. 1's peak of less than 36.6 GW.

About 2:15 pm CT on Oct. 6, SPP West Hub real-time locational marginal price was $12.50/megawatt-hour, North Hub was $28.20/MWh, and South Hub was $28.44/MWh.

S&P Global Energy does not track West Hub day-ahead on-peak LMPs, but SPP data shows those prices for delivery Oct. 6 were $55.81/MWh for the North Hub and $43.07/MWh for the South Hub. Day-ahead on-peak LMPs for delivery Sept. 29 were $36.37/MWh for the North Hub and $41.95/MWh for the South Hub.