Do Winter Storms Pose Hidden Risks for Offshore Wind and the New England Grid?
Abstract
Winter storms routinely challenge New England's energy systems by increasing heating demands and causing natural gas shortages, leading to higher fuel costs and price shocks in wholesale electricity markets. In recent years, grid operators in New England have proposed building substantial offshore wind power capacity (the first in the U.S.), both as a way to meet long-term decarbonization goals and provide an additional source of generation during severe winter weather, when higher wind speeds could help offset increased demand for electricity. Yet, little consideration has been given to the potential negative impacts of sudden losses of wind power during winter storms, which can occur if wind speeds go above the designed cut-out speed of the turbines (25 m/s). As the New England grid becomes more reliant on offshore wind, an open question is whether this system will become more vulnerable to unforeseen losses of wind power production during winter storms (when generation is needed the most). Here, we use a grid operations model of the New England bulk electricity system to examine the behavior of the system during the 2018 historical bomb cyclone that struck the region. We then use longer historical records from 1958-present to analyze the joint probability of excessive wind speeds occurring while low temperatures simultaneously cause spikes in electricity demand and high fuel prices. Our results show that wind turbine cut-out events caused by excessive wind speeds are most common during winter. However, these events (by themselves) do not challenge system reliability and have modest impacts on electricity prices. Instead, the major vulnerability of the New England grid to wind power losses is during summer, when wind speeds are lowest. By and large, we find that the benefits of having increased offshore wind present during winter storms likely outweigh negative impacts from unanticipated cut-out events caused by excessive wind speeds.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFMNH21A..08A