Fuel supply chains in the Western Interconnect: Evaluating availability during extreme weather events

During the winter of 2017, the eastern continental United States experienced an extreme weather event resulting in below average temperatures and consistently overcast skies. This event, referred to as a bombogenesis or “Bomb Cyclone” (BC), is one of a handful of extreme weather events experienced in the U.S. in recent years in which signif- icant strain is placed on U.S. electric interconnections. A U.S. Department of Energy study summarizing the impact of the BC indicated that coal and fuel oil/dual-firing plants provided sufficient reserves to prevent severe electricity shortages which would have otherwise resulted in significant widespread outages in the Eastern Interconnect (EI). A large regional transmission organization issued several responses to address the report's concern regarding fuel supply security, highlighting the importance of timely fuel supply policy, and initiating a cross-institutional conversation to this end. The resultant policy conversations are not unique to the EI and generalizations are therefore of great interest to stakeholders in the western United States; a similar analysis is used to investigate the impact of a BC-like event placing strain of similar magnitude on the Western Interconnect, while introducing a resilience metric associated with the storability of fuel. © 2019 Elsevier Inc.