Bitter Cold Stops Coal, While Nuclear Power Excels
30th November 2019
Most generation systems suffer outages during extreme weather, but most of those involved fossil fuel systems. Coal stacks are frozen and diesel generators simply can’t function in such low temperatures. Gas chokes up – its pipelines can’t keep up with demand – and prices skyrocket.
Wind also suffers because the hottest and coldest months are usually the least windy.
December 2nd, 2019 at 11:32
Gas delivery is crippled by the US government. Companies are not allowed to build pipelines that deliver the maximum capacity. Generally, companies compress natural gas into storage in the Northeast during the summer and draw down from storage during winter. In some cases they have to compress the gas into LNG for storage. Fuel oil is similarly stockpiled.
Coal stockpiles can freeze, but a couple of sticks of dynamite fixes that problem pretty quickly. When railcars enter the coal fired plant, they are parked over a “trench burner” that heats the cars and melts any ice before the cars are dumped. And diesels are not limited by air temperature.
Do prices go up when demand increases? Of course.