EIA Tool Tracks New England Energy Capacity Constraints

To increase customer understanding of weather-related energy issues in New England, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) has launched an interactive dashboard showing energy market conditions in that region. The dashboard can help analysts and others examine many key aspects of the New England energy market such as fuel diversification, wholesale price volatility, energy delivery dynamics, weather’s impact on operations, fuel prices’ effect on electricity rates, and regional and onsite fuel stocks.

EIA will update the dashboard, eia.gov/ dashboard/newengland/overview, daily by 10:30 a.m. EST, including on weekends. It covers detailed regional information on temperatures; various fuel prices; locational marginal prices; the status of the electric grid, outages, and available capacity; current and projected load; LNG imports; electricity generation fuel mix; inter-regional electric transmission and natural gas flows; and petroleum product stocks.

Sources for the dashboard include both EIA and third-party data. Key series from third-party sources include actual and forecast temperatures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); various electric price, load, generation, interchange, operating statistics, and fuel-mix information from the Independent System Operator New England (ISO-NE); natural gas demand, LNG imports, and natural gas pipeline flows from OPIS PointLogic; crude oil and petroleum product prices from Refinitiv; and spot natural gas and electricity prices from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Users can select information by fuel, choose customized time periods and other ranges for graph- ics, display data contents on graphs, animate temperature trends, print the entire dashboard and individual visualizations, download selected data series or images, and automate data transfer through access to real-time information Application Programming Interface calls.

The commentary section provides analysis of recent New England energy market conditions when a situation warrants more insight. Energy delivery infrastructure constraints and outages can have a pronounced influence on New England’s wholesale energy prices, energy flows, and operations. As a result, the New England dashboard illustrates these constraints, including nuclear generating capacity availability, real-time locational marginal prices by ISO-NE zone and electric interface, electric generation outages and reductions, and an interactive map indicating natural gas pipeline capacity use at key flow points affecting New England.

(SOURCE: The Weekly Propane Newsletter, February 4, 2019)