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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Electricity prices soar as US regional grids wobble from extreme heat
By Tim McLaughlin and Timothy Gardner BOSTON (Reuters) -U.S. regional electric grid operators scrambled to avoid rotating blackouts on Tuesday, preserving razor-thin power generation margins as temperatures in the eastern half of the country soared past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). Jammed and overheated transmission lines caused congestion and lifted wholesale electricity prices in New York, the largest city in the United States, to nearly $2,400 per megawatt hour (MWh) during peak evening demand. Wholesale prices in Long Island topped $7,000 per MWh. New York ISO, the state's grid operator, warned it may initiate emergency actions after operating reserves declined. PJM Interconnection, which covers one in five Americans as the largest U.S. power grid operator, ordered several utilities in its territory to curtail electricity to customers in voluntary reduction programs. "Load reductions should continue until released by PJM," the grid operator said in a Tuesday afternoon directive. PJM issued several warnings throughout the day as it battled to keep electricity flowing across overheated high-voltage transmission lines. Generation output also ebbed as gas-powered turbines operated at reduced capacity in the extreme heat. ISO New England, whose six-state territory includes Boston, saw spot wholesale electricity prices soar past $1,500 per MWh on peak consumption around 5:30 p.m. EDT. Tuesday's prices were more than three times higher during Monday's peak demand at the start of the heat wave. New England joined other U.S. regions deploying exigent and emergency strategies to avoid widespread outages. The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday ordered Duke Energy Carolina to use specific electric generating units to operate at their maximum generation output levels in the southeast. ISO New England issued a "Power Caution" after the unexpected loss of generation left the region short of the resources needed to meet both consumer demand and required operating reserves. The grid operator said it would tap reserve resources to keep supply and demand balanced. Duke Energy said it may not have sufficient generation available to meet unusually high demand and may have to curtail electric use to avoid outages, according to the DOE order. As a result, the utility has notified some wholesale customers to limit their use, which is expected to reduce electricity demand by up to 1,000 megawatts during peak hours. In addition to increasing imports from adjoining regions and asking power plant operators to defer maintenance, grid operators and utilities are calling on stand-by units to boost the supply of electricity. To prepare for Tuesday's scorching heat, ISO New England directed power plant operators not to do any testing or maintenance that would affect electric reliability. Temperatures in Boston topped 100 F (38 C) early Tuesday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. ISO New England forecast that electricity demand approached 26,000 MW about 6:15 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, short of the record high of 28,130 MW set in August 2006. (Reporting By Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Mark Porter, Bill Berkrot and Sonali Paul)
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
Toys are getting pricier as tariffs kick in
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up ENERGY Advertisement Head of electric grid overseer ISO New England to retire Gordon van Welie is stepping down from ISO New England. Photo courtesy of ISO New England ISO New England chief executive Gordon van Welie is retiring on Jan. 1 after 24 years running the organization that oversees the region's electricity grid and wholesale power markets. The board of the Holyoke-based nonprofit is promoting its chief operating officer, Vamsi Chadalavada, to take over after van Welie retires. He'll oversee a staff of around 700 people and a budget of about $300 million. The organization is funded by fees from buyers and sellers in the wholesale electricity markets, as well as from companies that use regional transmission services. Van Welie first joined ISO New England in 2000 as its chief operating officer, not long after the organization was formed following the restructuring of New England's wholesale electricity markets. He has been an outspoken advocate for ensuring the grid system remains reliable even when under duress at times of extreme heat or cold, and in particular for improving coordination between the electric and natural gas industries toward that end. Van Welie, who is 63, said that while the electricity supply and demand outlook remains relatively stable for the next several years, there are changes afoot, including a new capacity market design at ISO, that make it an appropriate time to step aside and let a new leader take over. — JON CHESTO Advertisement HEALTH CARE Dr. Oz pushes drug middlemen to end rebates before Washington acts Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz spoke during a news conference to discuss health insurance at the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters in Washington, D.C., on June 23. SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images Prescription drug middlemen should end the complicated system of drug rebates before the government steps in to change it, Medicare and Medicaid chief Mehmet Oz said Tuesday. The remarks signal the Trump administration may revive attempts to eliminate the payments drugmakers send to pharmacy benefit managers after prescriptions are filled. In his first term in 2019, President Trump considered regulations that would have eliminated that system, but officials abandoned them before they went into effect. 'There's a possibility that we have a window now where the three big PBMs might actually consider doing away with the rebate-slash-kickback system,' Oz told a meeting hosted by Transparency-Rx, a coalition of smaller PBMs committed to more open pricing. The three largest companies in the industry, CVS Health Corp., UnitedHealth Group, and Cigna Group, handle about 80 percent of US prescriptions. Drug middlemen extract discounts from drugmakers in order to secure insurance coverage for medications. Drugmakers claim that pressure to give rebates to PBMs drives drug prices higher, while PBMs say they don't have control over setting drug prices. Oz suggested regulators and lawmakers could revamp the system 'fairly expeditiously, because there's a motivated group of people who want to do that.' Before the Trump administration regulates or Congress writes laws, Oz said it might be worth giving PBMs 'one last chance to fix it on their own.' Congress has considered bipartisan changes to how PBMs are paid in recent years, but none has become law yet. — BLOOMBERG NEWS Advertisement ECONOMY Powell reiterates Fed's wait-and-see approach before cutting rates The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C. Ting Shen/Bloomberg Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, reaffirmed his view that the central bank can afford to be patient before cutting interest rates amid uncertainty about how President Trump's policies will impact the economy, despite a growing divide among officials about when and by how much to lower borrowing costs. Powell, who testified before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, said that the Fed was in no rush to take any policy action given that the labor market remains solid, inflation is still elevated, and price pressures appear poised to intensify as a result of Trump's tariffs. 'For the time being, we are well positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance,' Powell said, echoing a similar message sent last week after the Fed voted to hold rates steady for a fourth straight meeting. 'It's just a question about being prudent and careful,' he added during one exchange with a lawmaker. 'We don't see weakness in the labor market. If we did, that would change things.' He later told another lawmaker that if price pressures related to tariffs end up being less pronounced than feared, 'that'll matter for our policy.' — NEW YORK TIMES Advertisement ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Anthropic wins ruling on AI training in copyright lawsuit but must face trial on pirated books Claude, Anthropic's chatbot, accessed on a phone. JACKIE MOLLOY/NYT In a test case for the artificial intelligence industry, a federal judge has ruled that AI company Anthropic didn't break the law by training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books. But the company is still on the hook and must now go to trial over how it acquired those books by downloading them from online 'shadow libraries' of pirated copies. US District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco said in a ruling filed late Monday that the AI system's distilling from thousands of written works to be able to produce its own passages of text qualified as 'fair use' under US copyright law because it was 'quintessentially transformative.' 'Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic's (AI large language models) trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,' Alsup wrote. But while dismissing a key claim made by the group of authors who sued the company for copyright infringement last year, Alsup also said Anthropic must still go to trial in December over its alleged theft of their works. 'Anthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library,' Alsup wrote. — ASSOCIATED PRESS AVIATION US strikes on Iran add to global travel disruptions and flight cancellations An Emirates Boeing 777 at the gate at Dubai International Airport. Jon Gambrell/Associated Press The US entry into Israel's war with Iran caused travel disruptions to pile up globally this week — with flight cancellations continuing Tuesday, even after President Trump claimed a cease-fire was 'in effect.' Following unprecedented bombings ordered by Trump on three Iranian nuclear and military sites over the weekend, Iran on Monday launched a limited missile attack on US forces at Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base. Qatar, which was quick to condemn the attack, had temporarily closed its airspace just over an hour earlier. Airports and skies throughout the region have been on edge since Israel began the deadly war on June 13 — with a surprise barrage of attacks on Iran, which responded with its own missile and drone strikes. And in the days following the escalatory US strikes, more and more carriers canceled flights, particularly in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which sit just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. After a cease-fire was announced between Israel and Iran, some of those disruptions eased. But the truce appeared to be on shaky ground Tuesday, with Trump accusing both countries of violating the agreement — and many airlines have halted select routes through the middle of the week, citing safety concerns. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement
Reuters
4 days ago
- Climate
- Reuters
New England electric grid operates under precautionary alert
BOSTON, June 24 (Reuters) - The electric grid for Boston and the surrounding region operated under a precautionary alert on Tuesday as the surplus of power was expected to narrow to a razor-thin margin amid soaring temperatures. ISO New England, the electric grid operator for the six-state region, began operating under a precautionary alert late Monday as energy supplies tightened. Wholesale electricity prices over the past 24 hours have signaled tightening supplies, with the grid reporting nearly $430 per megawatt hour (MWh), a ten-fold increase over prices when the system is not stressed. To prepare for Tuesday's scorching heat, the grid directed power plant operators not to do any testing or maintenance that would affect electric reliability. New England joined other regional grids in the eastern half of the country in deploying exigent strategies to balance the supply and demand of electricity. Besides increasing imports from adjoining regions and asking power plant operators to defer maintenance, they called on stand-by units to boost the supply of electricity. Temperatures in Boston are forecast to approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) Tuesday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. ISO New England forecast that electricity demand would approach 26,000 megawatts (MW) late Tuesday, short of the record high of 28,130 MW set in August 2006. Last month, ISO New England predicted electricity demand to reach 24,803 MW under normal weather conditions, and up to 25,886 MW during any periods of above-average summer weather, such as an extended heat wave. The latest forecast predicted that demand would peak Tuesday evening at 25,800 MW. Surplus capacity was expected to fall to 266 MW, a departure from a typical margin of several thousand megawatts during more temperate weather.
Reuters
22-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
New England grid demand hits record low as rooftop solar kicks in
NEW YORK, April 22 (Reuters) - Power grid use in the far northeast United States registered an all-time low over the weekend as mild weather and rooftop solar panels slashed demand on the regional electrical system, grid operator ISO New England said on Tuesday. WHY IT MATTERS The U.S. power grid is shifting as climate change, the rise of renewable electricity generation and the electrification of buildings and industries like transportation upend long-held supply and demand trends. The Reuters Power Up newsletter provides everything you need to know about the global energy industry. Sign up here. On April 20, power demand on the New England power grid dropped to 5,318 megawatts after three consecutive years of registering record lows, ISO New England, the grid operator, said in a statement. This record was more than 1,200 megawatts, or about 20%, lower than last year's. After reaching a trough in the afternoon, power demand more than doubled on the grid throughout the day as the sun set, rooftop solar energy diminished, and homes and business drew more power from the grid. At its peak on the day, so-called behind-the-meter solar peaked at about 6,600 megawatts. KEY QUOTE "The trend toward more 'duck curve' days, when demand is lowest in the afternoon instead of overnight, illustrates the region's changing resource mix, and the role different types of resources play over the course of a day," ISO New England said. New England is in the midst of a broader shift in consumption, with a longer-term move away from the traditional peaking demand in the summer towards winter peaks as more buildings incorporate electric heat pumps.
Boston Globe
14-03-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Hydro-Quebec still isn't exporting electricity to New England. Does it matter?
Last year, the vast majority — more than 90 percent — of the electricity used in New England was produced by generators in the region, according to The rest of our electricity comes from imports. Hydro-Quebec's In all, Hydro-Quebec imports represented about 5 percent of New England's net electricity use last year. Losing that amount of power isn't enough to threaten the region's electric grid in relatively mild weather, and an ISO New England spokesperson confirmed earlier this week that the pause from the Canadian utility isn't currently affecting reliability. Advertisement Hydro-Quebec previously told the Globe that the halt in electricity sales to New England's wholesale market was due to warmer weather making those sales less economical, not The issue of electricity exports came up during a conversation on Thursday that Quebec premier Francois Legault had with Governor Maura Healey, although the focus on the call was on the relationship between Massachusetts and Quebec. Legault, in a 'We had a productive conversation with Premier Legault about our shared commitment to growing our regional economy and harnessing affordable energy,' Healey said in a statement Friday. 'Massachusetts has a longstanding partnership with Quebec and other Canadian provinces on energy issues. We will continue this important dialogue in the face of President Trump's misguided and costly tariffs.' Advertisement Dana Gerber can be reached at
