Steve Cicala Profile picture
Associate Professor, Tufts University Department of Economics Substack: https://t.co/7xitykLNlJ

Feb 19, 2021, 9 tweets

ERCOT stands out a bit.

This is comparing realized hourly load against predicted load based on the weather, time of day, day of week, etc. etc. ERCOT reports this for 8 different weather zones, and many markets break their total system load into separate areas, so about 100 are plotted here.

A couple of standouts: *YIKES* Permian basin!

You can see that wells (that use electricity for their pumps) in the Permian shut in when prices spiked over the weekend.

Meanwhile, across the border in El Paso Electric territory:

The Texas coast really got hit:

Sunflower Electric in Kansas also came up short on the 17th, but duration matters a lot here. (It's also a small area).

Note that predictions here are all out of sample--actually based on data from 2017-2019. It is then normalized to be mean zero for January 2021.

The Permian was still largely offline on Friday, even as prices returned to normal.

Perhaps more worrying is that the coast is still way below normal while temps are still around freezing. The load profile looks more normal, so I would guess this is reduced usage, not grid interruption. That could indicate damaged homes still dark, or fear of bill shock.

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling