Regional wildfires impacting Valley’s power supply

As Valley Electric Association’s Vice President of Engineering, Operations, and Power Supply, Logan Gernet has previously worked at several different utility companies over the years.

At one point during his career, Gernet worked on an energy trading floor and ran a resource planning team where the group tries to plan out what the electrical demand will be for consumers over multiple years.

As an expert on power supply, Gernet gave a wide-ranging presentation at VEA’s conference center on Aug. 11, regarding how excessive heatwaves strain the electrical grid and increases power demand.

The hour-long presentation dubbed “Beat the Peak” is part of VEA’s Community Forward, Informational Series program, which is designed to educate co-op members about the importance of when they use electricity, and how the utility can partner together to minimize power costs.

“Valley Electric Association’s rates are fairly static, and our costs can vary a fair bit from one hour to another,” he said. “The cost of power at 10 a.m. may be very, very different from the cost of power at 5 p.m. Beating the peak is trying to get people to understand that difference and how we can work together to minimize costs for everybody. We’re looking for people to conserve when energy is most expensive.”

Power hours

Gernet noted that the peak usage of electricity most often occurs between the hours of 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.

“That’s the period of time when net electricity usage is at its highest,” he said. “In fact, the costs of power are highest in that period of time as well, and the interesting thing is that it’s not just in the summer, but year-round. That’s true in November, it’s true in March, it’s true in May, just as it’s true in July and August. Between the hours of 5 to 9 p.m., we are asking people to help us beat the peak, which means we are asking people to shave, curtail and conserve power usage during that time so that all of the co-op membership can save money.”

Additionally, Gernet offered examples of some of the best methods to conserve power in order to decrease the demand for electricity, thus avoiding what’s known as rolling brownouts and blackouts.

His first suggestion was to avoid, if possible, the use of any major appliances between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.

“If you have a pool irrigation timer where you’re going to run a particularly big load like a pump, you can schedule it to operate at some other time, other than 5 to 9 p.m., and that’s perfectly fine,” he said. “Pools don’t really care as long as they get the right amount of time to circulate chlorine. You can also set your thermostat a little bit higher, from 5 to 9 p.m., and the way you can make it extra comfortable for yourself is before 5 p.m., you precool your house. If you ordinarily like your temperature at 75 degrees, from 3 to 5 p.m., you can set your thermostat to 72 degrees, which will precool the house, and then over that 5 to 9 p.m. window, it will be a little cooler. It will heat up gradually, but in that 5 to 9 p.m. window, maybe you set it at 78, so you’re going to be roughly in that 75-degree window that you wanted, but you shifted your electric usage to a time where it isn’t the period of peak usage that everybody else in the community is using.”

Misunderstandings

Gernet also spoke about a few misconceptions some people have regarding how utilities and electric grids function.

“Electricity is generated and we’ve got all kinds of sources that we use to do that,” he said. “It might be a coal plant or a natural gas plant or a nuclear plant. It could be a large utility-scale solar facility, it could be wind generation, or geothermal. It’s all transmitted, and it goes up to high voltage because, with high voltage, you have less losses.”

Notably, Gernet said when VEA provides power to its members, the utility at the same time is building distribution.”

“We are purchasing transmission, we’re purchasing energy, we’re purchasing generating capacity, and we’re passing the cost of all that through to our membership,” he said. “So when we incur a cost one way or another, our members will incur a cost, that’s why we’re so sensitive about that. We’re always going to be trying to get the best deal we can for our members. We’re always going to be trying to save them money if we can, but that’s kind of the way it works because every dollar that we save will benefit our members.”

Wildfire connection

Another topic of discussion Gernet touched on was how the recent, active wildfires in other states can impact VEA’s power supply.

“In July, the wildfire at the southern border of Oregon and the northern part of California threatened transmission lines in the area,” he noted. “So utilities had to de-energize those transmission lines going through that forest. The whole grid is interconnected where all of that power might have flowed down here and into California. We’ve got lots of hydroelectric generation up in this area that Oregon and Washington has, but none of that could make its way down to serve the high loads of northern and southern California, or Nevada for that matter.”

Price hike

As a result, Gernet said there was a lack of supply of electricity to go around, which raised the price for power.

“We saw very high prices for a few days in July, but we didn’t believe there was a chance of dropping load,” he said. “I think California was having some problems, but overall, it mostly affected pricing and load. Thankfully the temperatures were low enough at that time that the resources of the grid could serve it, but nevertheless, it was a little bit of a scary moment. It was surprising that during low temperatures we were having this issue and it was because of the wildfire in southern Oregon.”

Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes