BURNING JET FUEL TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON

"This week in New England, some of our electricity came from an unusual source: jet fuel. The return of the polar vortex has brought the return of grid reliability issues ... In many cases, generators do not contractually have access to natural gas, so they cannot generate electricity ... As a consequence, the grid operators have resorted to some rather unusual steps ... This included firing up several infrequently-deployed combustion turbines which ran on jet fuel ... The reliance on gas is exacerbated by what ISO-NE refers to as “a ‘just-in-time’ fuel delivery system” which can “challenge the reliable operation of the power system ... In recent years, the demand for natural gas has significantly increased in New England, driven by customer conversions to natural gas for heating and the increased use of the fuel to generate electricity. Nevertheless, the natural gas pipeline infrastructure used to serve this demand has not been expanded, resulting in periodic pipeline constraints."

Zum Artikel von Peter Kelly-Detwiler, erschienen auf Forbes (24. Januar 2014) »