Our Energy Markets team kept their focus on reliability in the face of bomb cyclone

With 43 members and nearly 1.3 million consumers counting on Tri-State for their power supply, it’s no small task to make sure there’s enough power available to go around. Plenty of planning and coordination go into the design of our generation resources as well as the transmission infrastructure to get the power where it’s needed. 

When it comes down to the moment-to-moment dispatch of generation resource fleet, our Energy Markets team is tasked with making sure the members’ energy needs are met on a 24/7 basis. This is a complex task on an average day, and even more challenging when extreme weather events impact multiple parts of the system, as was the case during the March 13 bomb cyclone that hit the region.

Weather monitoring is a part of our regular process, and when it looks like extreme weather events will impact the availability of power or the demand for power, our teams take steps to prepare, monitor, adjust and respond. 

With wind and solar generation significantly impacted by the storm, and transmission outages further curtailing both wind and thermal resources, teams used all available resources to meet the demand for electricity. Natural gas and diesel fueled combustion turbine generation was brought online or ramped up, and the reserve sharing groups in the region took turns stepping up to help impacted systems recover from the sudden loss of resources. 

Dan Walter, senior manager Energy Markets shares how his team responded to the storm before it even began in our blog.