As households gathered for the vacations on the finish of final yr, in lots of areas they had been joined by an unwelcome visitor: bitter chilly. From December 22-26, 2022, Winter Storm Elliott introduced near-record low temperatures and wind chills throughout a lot of the Central and Jap U.S. Within the energy sector, document winter electrical energy demand coincided with the large-scale lack of fossil energy crops as a result of gear failures and interruptions to pure fuel provides. Components of the Southeast skilled rolling blackouts as electrical energy demand exceeded provide, whereas energy costs spiked in lots of areas. Extra transmission capability would have protected shoppers from these blackouts and value spikes by bringing in energy from different areas. The big variations in energy costs throughout areas as Winter Storm Elliott moved west-to-east throughout the nation, plus the financial value of outages in components of the Southeast, point out the worth a stronger energy grid might have supplied in the course of the occasion. This report finds that in some areas modest investments in interregional transmission capability would have yielded almost $100 million in advantages in the course of the 5-day occasion, whereas most areas might have saved tens of tens of millions of {dollars}.
The Worth of Transmission Throughout Winter Storm Elliott
