The Southwest Power Pool (SPP), responsible for coordinating electric reliability in a 14-state area in the central United States, expects to have enough generation to meet energy demand this winter.
SPP conducts an assessment each year to identify and mitigate threats to energy reliability during the winter season lasting from December to March. The analysis considers factors such as historical and predicted future electricity use, weather forecasts, the variability of available wind energy, drought conditions and generation and transmission outages.
Based on its assessment results, SPP anticipates a 98.5 percent probability that it will have sufficient resources to meet the projected peak demand for electricity and maintain energy reserves throughout the upcoming winter season. SPP further anticipates an even greater chance that it can meet region-wide demand with the help of reserves if needed.
This winter’s forecast represents an increase in SPP’s operational certainty over the past two seasonal assessments. Weather forecasts, peak demand projections, expected generation availability and other trends suggest the region will have a greater margin between electricity demand and generating capacity than in the previous two peak seasons.