[Leanan]

The usually rabidly cornucopian CERA (where's my $30 oil?) is worried about natural gas.

CERA: New England power outages possible

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ASHINGTON - An energy consultant warned Tuesday that "sudden extremely cold weather" could cause power outages in New England this winter.

The warning from Cambridge Energy Research Associates is based on forecasts of electricity demand, or load, made by the region's grid monitoring agency and the possibility that New England power generators may not be able to secure enough natural gas to run their plants.

"In the event of really cold weather, gas supplies to power generators could be curtailed if the available gas is redirected to meet residential heating load or if higher prices bid gas away from power generation uses," CERA said in a news release.

Daily U.S. natural-gas output is about 4 percent below normal as a result of hurricane-related damage in the Gulf of Mexico and prices are more than double year-ago levels on fears that demand could outstrip supply this winter.

In the "most extreme outage scenarios," the Independent System Operator-New England forecast that the region could be 3 percent to 7 percent short of the gas-fired electricity it would need, according to CERA.

Shiv Mani, CERA's director for eastern North America energy, said one such scenario would be temperatures "below 10 degrees for at least a week and subzero temperatures for a few days," though he could not put a probability on such an event.

[basil_hayden]

This interdependency thing is way out of control.

Glad I spent November chopping firewood just in case.

I have oil heat and now I have worry about natural gas supplies for electricity to fire my burner? Ridiculous!

Why is every other commercial on TV lately from natural gas suppliers trying to get oil heaters to switch over? Why try to gain market share with a product that is currently maxxed out? More ridiculousness.

Let's see, is it generator installation time or solar array installation time?
And where will the cash come from to go in either direction?
Quite a dilemma.

[aahala]

Most US gas consumers have yet to get their Christmas present
from hell -- the first cold weather natural gas bill.

I imagine once this happens, thermastats will quickly get lower, out
comes the long johns and this 6% shutin rate will not look as important.

[Kingcoal]

I have Nuke power, so what do I care?

[Leanan]

Natural gas is often used to provide extra power during peak load times. So even people who think they are on nuclear or hydroelectric may be using natural gas, at least part of the time.

[marek]

First, if there is an electricity shortage in New England, then they will be importing electricity from other states, so a problem can become regional. Second, Pennsylvania generated 6753 GWh from nuclear and 1978 GWh from natural gas in August 2005. Electricity production from natural gas in PA rose by 57 % since August 2004
Even though PA is not on the same grid, it's still connected. Not to mention that it's economically interconnected.

[Leanan]

And not just other states. Canada is part of the grid as well. A couple of years ago, when they declared an energy alert in New England, Toronto and other parts of Canada were affected as well.

[AmericanEmpire]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hy is every other commercial on TV lately from natural gas suppliers trying to get oil heaters to switch over? Why try to gain market share with a product that is currently maxxed out? More ridiculousness.