Duke Energy Corp. has agreed to sell eight Southeast wholesale power plants to KGen Partners LLC for $475 million, drastically less than it cost to build them, as part of Duke's ongoing plan to shed underperforming assets.
Duke considered the eight natural-gas fired plants worth at least $1.4 billion more than the negotiated price before it put them up for sale in January.
Lackluster bids forced Duke to write down the value of the plants three times. The plants are among the weakest performers in Duke's weakest division.
Selling the power plants -- all outside Duke Power's service area -- is an integral piece of the Charlotte-based company's turnaround plan. The company is returning to its more conservative roots and moving away from the once high-flying wholesale energy business, which has been decimated by too much available power chasing too few customers.
Total proceeds from the planned sale, including about $500 million in tax benefits, will be about $1 billion.
It also pushes Duke significantly over its goal for the year of $1.5 billion in asset sales. When the deal is final, expected to be this fall, total asset sales will be about $2.5 billion.
KGen Partners is owned by New York-based MatlinPatterson Global Opportunities II. The private equity firm doesn't disclose its financials.
MatlinPatterson Chairman Mark Patterson declined to elaborate on why his firm was interested in the eight plants or his plans for them.
Securities filings show the firm or its principals have holdings in MCI Inc. and NRG Energy Inc. The firm has a history of buying the debt of bankrupt companies.
Duke built its portfolio of southeastern plants in the late '90s and 2000, to sell wholesale power to big industrial users and local utilities.
At the time, prospects looked bright for the wholesale plants: They ran on natural gas, which was cheap. They would feed a growing economy's thirst for power. They would take advantage of new rules proposed by the federal government that would make it easier to move power from a Southeastern plant to neighboring states.
But each of those assumptions proved wrong: Natural gas prices spiked; the economy faltered and dampened power demand; and the proposed rules ran into a roadblock of Southeastern regulators who didn't want their residents paying for improvements that would mostly benefit out-of-staters.
Some of Duke's eight wholesale plants in the region haven't been running at all recently, finding it hard to compete against lower- cost coal and nuclear plants.
The final $475 million price tag for the eight plants was lower than what Duke thought it would get, even after twice realizing the plants would fetch less on the market and recording those writedowns in its books. To reflect that, Duke will amend its first-quarter earnings with an additional $36 million loss.
Financial entities, rather than utilities, were bigger bidders for Duke's eight plants, executives have said.
Those financial institutions are more willing to wait the five to 10 years necessary for the market to pick up, Duke Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Paul Anderson has said.
But utilities, under pressure from credit rating agencies, feel the need to cut debt now and don't feel they have the luxury to wait.
Duke says it's on schedule to cut its goal of $3.5 billion to $4 billion of debt this year.
Duke is holding onto wholesale plants in California, the Northeast and Latin America, which provide more reliable profits.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
Iraq Electricity Crisis intensifies as summer heat drives demand; households face power outages, reliance on private generators, distorted tariffs, and strained grid capacity despite government reforms, Siemens upgrades, and IEA warnings.
Key Points
A supply-demand gap causing outages, generator reliance, and grid inefficiencies across Iraq, worsened by summer peaks.
✅ Siemens deal to upgrade generation and grid
✅ Progressive tariffs to curb demand and waste
✅ Private generators fill gaps but raise costs
At a demonstration in June 2018, protesters in Basra loaded a black box resembling a coffin with the inscription “Electricity” onto the roof of a car. This was one demonstration of how much of a political issue electricity is in Iraq.
With what is likely to be another hot summer ahead, there is increasing pressure on the Baghdad government to improve access to electricity and water.
Many Iraqis blame the government for not providing adequate services despite the country’s oil wealth. Protests in southern Iraq last year turned violent, with demonstrators attacking governmental and political parties’ buildings; in neighboring Iran, blackouts also sparked protests over outages.
“It is very hard” to deal with the electricity issues, said Iraqi journalist Methaq al-Fayyadh, adding that the lack of reliable electricity was not a new problem and affects most parts of the country.
Dozens of people protested June 1 in Karbala against prices for new generators and demanded an improvement to the electricity situation.
In anticipation of high temperatures during Eid al-Fitr, the Electricity Ministry called on governorates to adhere to allocated quotas and told the public to ration electricity.
“Outages remain a daily occurrence for most households because increasing generating capacity has been outrun by increasing demand for electricity, as surging demand worldwide demonstrates,” noted the International Energy Agency (IAE) in April.
This is particularly the case, the authors said, as the hot summer months, when temperatures can top 50 degrees Celsius, drive up the use of air conditioning.
The Iraqi government has made improving the electricity supply one of its priorities, including nuclear power plans under consideration. The Electricity Ministry, headed by Luay al-Khatteeb, announced in May that national electricity production had reached 17 gigawatts.
Khatteeb presented comparative electricity data for May from 2018 and 2019, indicating production increases on every day of the month. IEA data indicate that available electricity supply has increased over the past five years and the gap between supply and demand has widened.
The government signed an agreement with German company Siemens this year to upgrade Iraq’s electricity grid, and in parallel deals with Iran to rehabilitate and develop the grid were finalized, according to Iranian officials. The agreement “includes the addition of new and highly efficient power generation capacity, rehabilitation and upgrade of existing plants and the expansion of transmission and distribution networks,” Siemens said.
The Iraqi prime minister’s office said the 4-year plan would be worth $15.7 billion. The first phase includes the installation of 13 transformer stations, cooling systems for power stations and building a 500-megawatt, gas-fired power plant south of Baghdad.
In an interview with Al-Monitor, Khatteeb said radical changes would happen in 2020, stating that the current situation was not “ideal” but “better” because of steps taken to create more energy, amid discussions on energy cooperation with Iran that could shape implementation.
Robert Tollast, of the Iraq Energy Institute, said the economics of the electricity system is distorted. Subsidies ensured that electricity provided by the national grid is almost free, he said. However, while the subsidies were designed to help the poor, the tariff system disadvantages them and does not create incentives to consume electricity more efficiently, he said.
A large part of families’ electricity expenditures goes to operators of privately owned generators, which run on fuel. These neighbourhood generators are used to close gaps in the electricity supply but are expensive, and regional fuel arrangements such as ENOC’s swap of Iraqi fuel have highlighted supply constraints. Generator operators have sometimes worked with armed groups to prevent upgrades to the grid that could hurt their business.
Until 1990, the Iraq electricity sector was considered among the best in the region. That legacy was destroyed by successive wars and international sanctions. With Iraq’s population growing at a rate of 1 million per year, peak demand is projected to double by 2030 if left unchecked, the IEA estimated.
Tollast said efforts to improve the distribution system and increase capacity are key but it is important “to tackle the problem from the demand side.” This entails implementing a progressive tariff scheme so users pay more if they consume more, he said. There is a “tremendous use of energy per capita in Iraq,” Tollast said.
In the current tariff structure, consumers pay a fixed price if they use more than 4,000-kilowatt hours per year, a relatively low amount, meaning the price per unit drops the more one consumes.
Any change to the tariff system must be accompanied by a “political campaign” to explain the changes, said Tollast, adding that more investment in the electricity sector and a “change in culture” of using electricity was needed. “The current system is unsustainable, even with high oil prices,” he said.
Fayyadh said people don’t expect the government will be able to fix the electricity issue before summer, having failed to do so in the past.
Tollast struck a more optimistic tone, saying it was unlikely that Iran, which supplies about 40% of Iraq’s power, would cut its export of electricity to Iraq this year as it did in 2018. He added that the water situation was better than last year when the country experienced drought. Iraq has also been processing more flare gas, which can be used to generate electricity.
“There is an expectation that this year might not be as bad as last year,” he concluded.
Ontario IESO Accounting Dispute highlights tensions over public sector accounting standards, auditor general oversight, electricity market transparency, KPMG advice, rate-regulated accounting, and an alleged $1.3B deficit understatement affecting Hydro bills and provincial finances.
Key Points
A PSAS clash between Ontario's auditor general and the IESO, alleging a $1.3B deficit impact and transparency failures.
✅ Auditor alleges deficit understated by $1.3B
✅ Dispute over PSAS vs US-style accounting
✅ KPMG support, transparency and co-operation questioned
The bad blood between the Ontario government and auditor general bubbled to the surface once again Monday, with the Liberal energy minister downplaying a dispute between the auditor and the Crown corporation that manages the province's electricity market, even as the government pursued legislation to lower electricity rates in the province.
Glenn Thibeault said concerns raised by auditor general Bonnie Lysyk during testimony before a legislative committee last week aren't new and the practices being used by the Independent Electricity System Operator are commonly endorsed by major auditing firms.
"(Lysyk) doesn't like the rate-regulated accounting. We've always said we've relied on the other experts within the field as well, plus the provincial controller," Thibeault said.
#google#
"We believe that we are following public sector accounting standards."
Thibeault said that Ontario Power Generation, Hydro One and many other provinces and U.S. states use the same accounting practices.
"We go with what we're being told by those who are in the field, like KPMG, like E&Y," he said.
But a statement from Lysyk's office Monday disputed Thibeault's assessment.
"The minister said the practices being used by the IESO are common in other jurisdictions," the statement said.
"In fact, the situation with the IESO is different because none of the six other jurisdictions with entities similar to the IESOuse Canadian Public Sector Accounting Standards. Five of them are in the United States and use U.S. accounting standards."
Lysyk said last week that the IESO is using "bogus" accounting practices and her office launched a special audit of the agency late last year after the agency changed their accounting to be more in line with U.S. accounting, following reports of a phantom demand problem that cost customers millions.
Lysyk said the accounting changes made by the IESO impact the province's deficit, understating it by $1.3 billion as of the end of 2017, adding that IESO "stalled" her office when it asked for information and was not co-operative during the audit.
Lysyk's full audit of the IESO is expected to be released in the coming weeks and is among several accounting disputes her office has been engaged in with the Liberal government over the past few years.
Last fall, she accused the government of purposely obscuring the true financial impact of its 25% hydro rate cut by keeping billions in debt used to finance that plan off the province's books. Lysyk had said she would audit the IESO because of its role in the hydro plan's complex accounting scheme.
"Management of the IESO and the board would not co-operate with us, in the sense that they continually say they're co-operating, but they stalled on giving us information," she said last week.
Terry Young, a vice-president with the IESO, said the agency has fully co-operated with the auditor general. The IESO opened up its office to seven staff members from the auditor's office while they did their work.
"We recognize the work that she's doing and to that end we've tried to fully co-operate," he said. "We've given her all of the information that we can."
Young said the change in accounting standards is about ensuring greater transparency in transactions in the energy marketplace.
"It's consistent with many other independent electricity system operators are doing," he said.
Lysyk also criticized IESO's accounting firm, KPMG, for agreeing with the IESO on the accounting standards. She was critical of the firm billing taxpayers for nearly $600,000 work with the IESO in 2017, compared to their normal yearly audit fee of $86,500.
KPMG spokeswoman Lisa Papas said the accounting issues that IESO addressed during 2017 were complex, contributing to the higher fees.
The accounting practices the auditor is questioning are a "difference of professional judgement," she said.
"The standards for public sector organizations such as IESO are principles-based standards and, accordingly, require the exercise of considerable professional judgement," she said in a statement.
"In many cases, there is more than one acceptable approach that is compliant with the applicable standards."
Progressive Conservative energy critic Todd Smith said the government isn't being transparent with the auditor general or taxpayers, aligning with calls for cleaning up Ontario's hydro mess in the sector.
"Obviously, they have some kind of dispute but the auditor's office is saying that the numbers that the government is putting out there are bogus.
Those are her words," he said. "We've always said that we believe the auditor general's are the true numbers for the province of Ontario."
NDP energy critic Peter Tabuns said the Liberal government has decided to "play with accounting rules" to make its books look better ahead of the spring election, despite warnings that electricity prices could soar if costs are pushed into the future.
Louisiana Grid Rebuild After Hurricane Laura will overhaul transmission lines and distribution networks in Lake Charles, as Entergy restores power after catastrophic outages, replacing poles, transformers, and spans to stabilize critical electric infrastructure.
Key Points
Entergy's project replacing transmission and distribution in Lake Charles to restore power after the Cat 4 storm
✅ 1,000+ transmission structures and 6,637 poles damaged
✅ Entergy targets first energized line into Lake Charles in 2 weeks
✅ Full rebuild of Calcasieu and Cameron lines will take weeks
The main power utility for southwest Louisiana will need to "rebuild" the region's grid after Hurricane Laura blasted the region with 150 mph winds last week, top officials said.
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall last Thursday just south of Lake Charles near Cameron, damaging or destroying thousands of electric poles as well as leaving "catastrophic damages" to the transmission system for southwest Louisiana, similar to impacts seen during Typhoon Mangkhut outages in Hong Kong that left many without electricity.
“This is not a restoration," Entergy Louisiana president and CEO Phillip May said in a statement. "It’s almost a complete rebuild of our transmission and distribution system that serves Calcasieu and Cameron parishes.”
According to Entergy, all nine transmission lines that deliver power into the Lake Charles area are currently out service due to storm damage to multiple structures and spans of wire.
The transmission system is a critical component in the delivery of power to customers’ homes, and failures at substations can trigger large outages, as seen in Los Angeles station fire outage reported recently, according to the company.
Of those structures impacted, many were damaged "beyond repair" and require complete replacement.
Broken electrical poles are seen in Holly Beach, La., in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Entergy said the damage in southwest Louisiana includes 1,000 transmission structures, 6,637 broken poles, 2,926 transformers and 338 miles of downed distribution wire, highlighting why proactive reliability investments in Hamilton are being pursued by other utilities.
Some 8,300 workers are now in the area working to rebuild the transmission lines, but Entergy said that it will be about two to three weeks before power is available to customers in the Lake Charles area, a timeline similar to Tennessee outages after severe storms reported recently in other states.
"Restoring power will take longer to customers in inaccessible areas of the region," the company said. "While not impacting the expected restoration of service to residential customers, initial estimates are it will take weeks to rebuild all transmission lines in Calcasieu and Cameron parishes."
Entergy Louisiana expects to energize the first of its transmission lines into Lake Charles in two weeks.
“We understand going without power for this extended period will be challenging, and this is not the news customers want to hear. But we have thousands of workers dedicated to rebuilding our grid as quickly as they safely can to return some normalcy to our customers’ lives,” May said.
According to power outage tracking website poweroutage.us, over 164,000 customers remain without service in Louisiana as of Thursday morning, while a Carolinas outage update shows hundreds of thousands affected there as well.
On Wednesday, the Edison Electric Institute, the association of investor-owned electric companies in the U.S., said in a statement to FOX Business that electricity has been restored to approximately 737,000 customers, or 75% of those impacted by the storm across Louisiana, eastern Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas, even as utilities adapt to climate change to improve resilience.
At least 29,000 workers from 29 states, the District of Columbia and Canada are working to restore power in the region, according to the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC), which is coordinating efforts from government and power industry.
“The transmission loss in Louisiana is significant, with more than 1,000 transmission structures damaged or destroyed by the storm," Department of Energy (DOE) Deputy Secretary Mark Menezes said in a statement. Rebuilding the transmission system is essential to the overall restoration effort and will take weeks given the massive scale and complexity of the work. We will continue to coordinate closely to ensure the full capabilities of the industry and government are marshaled to rebuild this critical infrastructure as quickly as possible.”
At least 17 deaths in Louisiana have been attributed to the storm; more than half of those killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from the unsafe operation of generators, and residents are urged to follow generator safety tips to reduce these risks. Two additional deaths were verified on Wednesday in Beauregard Parish, which health officials said were due to heat-related illness following the storm.
TEP Undergrounding Policy prioritizes selective underground power lines to manage wildfire risk, engineering costs, and ratepayer impacts, balancing transmission and distribution reliability with right-of-way, safety, and vegetation management per Arizona regulators.
Key Points
A selective TEP approach to bury lines where safety, engineering, and cost justify undergrounding.
✅ Selective undergrounding for feeders near substations
✅ Balances wildfire mitigation, reliability, and ratepayer costs
✅ Follows ACC rules, BLM and USFS vegetation management
Though wildfires in California caused by power lines have prompted calls for more underground lines, Tucson Electric Power Co. plans to keep to its policy of burying lines selectively for safety.
Like many other utilities, TEP typically doesn’t install its long-range, high-voltage transmission lines, such as the TransWest Express project, and distribution equipment underground because of higher costs that would be passed on to ratepayers, TEP spokesman Joe Barrios said.
But the company will sometimes bury lower-voltage lines and equipment where it is cost-effective or needed for safety as utilities adapt to climate change across North America, or if customers or developers are willing to pay the higher installation costs
Underground installations generally include additional engineering expenses, right-of-way acquisition for projects like the New England Clean Power Link in other regions, and added labor and materials, Barrios said.
“This practice avoids passing along unnecessary costs to customers through their rates, so that all customers are not asked to subsidize a discretionary expenditure that primarily benefits residents or property owners in one small area of our service territory,” he said, adding that the Arizona Corporation Commission has supported the company’s policy.
Even so, TEP will place equipment underground in some circumstances if engineering or safety concerns, including electrical safety tips that utilities promote during storm season, justify the additional cost of underground installation, Barrios said.
In fact, lower-voltage “feeder” lines emerging from distribution substations are typically installed underground until the lines reach a point where they can be safely brought above ground, he added.
While in California PG&E has shut off power during windy weather to avoid wildfires in forested areas traversed by its power lines after events like the Drum Fire last June, TEP doesn’t face the same kind of wildfire risk, Barrios said.
Most of TEP’s 5,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines aren’t located in heavily forested areas that would raise fire concerns, though large urban systems have seen outages after station fires in Los Angeles, he said.
However, TEP has an active program of monitoring transmission lines and trimming vegetation to maintain a fire-safety buffer zone and address risks from vandalism such as copper theft where applicable, in compliance with federal regulations and in cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.
Lockdown Electricity Demand Trends reveal later mornings, weaker afternoons, and delayed peaks as WFH, streaming, and video conferencing reshape energy demand curves, grid forecasting, and residential electricity usage across Europe, New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Key Points
Shifts in power use during lockdowns: later ramps, weaker afternoons, and higher, delayed evening peaks.
✅ WFH and streaming raise residential load; industrial demand falls
Life in lockdown means getting up late, staying up till midnight and slacking off in the afternoons.
That’s what power market data in Europe show in the places where restrictions on activity have led to a widespread shift in daily routines of hundreds of millions of people.
It’s a similar story wherever lockdowns bite. In New York City electricity use has fallen as much as 18% from normal times at 8am. Tokyo and three nearby prefectures had a 5% drop in power use during weekdays after Japan declared a state of emergency on April 7, according to Tesla Asia Pacific, an energy forecaster.
Italy’s experience shows the trend most clearly since the curbs started there on March 5, before any other European country. Data from the grid operator Terna SpA gives a taste of what other places are also now starting to report, with global daily demand dips observed in many markets as well.
1. People are sleeping later
With no commute to the office people can sleep longer. Normally, electricity demand began to pick up between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Now in Germany, it’s clear coffee machines don’t go on until between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., said Simon Rathjen, founder of the trading company MFT Energy A/S.
Germany, France and Italy -- which between them make up almost two thirds of the euro-zone economy -- all have furlough measures that allow workers to receive a salary while temporarily suspended from their jobs. The U.K. also has a support package. Many of these workers will be getting up later.
"Now I have quite a relaxed start to the morning,” said David Freeman, an analyst in financial services from London. "I don’t get up until about half an hour before I need to start work.”
2. Less productive afternoons
There is a deeper dip in electricity use in the afternoons. Previously, power use rose between 2pm and 5pm. Now it dips as people head out for a walk or some air, according to UK demand data from National Grid Plc
It’s "as though we are living through a month of Sundays”, said Iain Staffell, senior lecturer in sustainable energy at Imperial College London.
3. Evenings in
From 6pm electricity use begins to rise steeply as people finish work and start chores. Restrictions like work and home schooling that prevent much daytime TV watching lifts in the early evening. This following chart for Germany shows the evening peak for power use coming during later hours.
The evening is when electricity use is highest, with most people confined to their homes. Netflix Inc reported a record 15.8 million paid subscribers – almost double the figure forecast by Wall Street analysts. Video-streaming services like Netflix and YouTube have found a captive audience. The new Disney+ service surpassed 50 million subscribers in just five months, a faster pace than predicted.
Internet traffic is skyrocketing, with a surge in bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming services and Zoom. This may mean that monthly broadband consumption of as much as 600 gigabytes, about 35% higher than before, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
In Singapore, electricity use has dropped off significantly since the country’s "circuit-breaker” efforts to keep people at home began April 7. Electricity use has fallen and stayed low during the day. But late at night is a different story, as power demand fell sharply immediately after the lockdown began, it has steadily crept back in the past two weeks, perhaps a sign that Tiger King and The Last Dance have been finding late-night fans in the city state.
In Ottawa, COVID-19 closures made it seem as if the city had fallen off the electricity grid, according to local reports.
4. Staying up late
We’re going to bed later too. Demand doesn’t start to drop off until 10pm to 12am, at least an hour later than before.
"My children are definitely going to bed later,” said Liz Stevens, a teaching assistant from London. "Our whole routine is out the window.”
It’s challenging for those that need to predict behaviour – power grids and electricity traders. Forecasting is based on historical data, and there isn’t anything to go into the models gauging use now.
The closest we can get is looking at big events like football World Championships when people are all sitting down at the same time, according to Rathjen at MFT.
"Forecasting demand right now is very tricky,” said Chris Kimmett, director of power grids at Reactive Technologies Ltd. "A global pandemic is uncharted territory."
What normal looks like when the crisis passes is also an open question. Different countries are set to unravel their measures in their own ways, and global power demand has already surged above pre-pandemic levels in some analyses, with Germany and Austria loosening restrictions first and Italy remaining under tight control. Some changes may be permanent, with both workers and employers becoming more comfortable with working from home.
5. Different sectors consume more
In China, which is further along recovering from the pandemic than Europe or the US, the sharp contraction in overall power output masks a shift in daily routines.
Eating habits have changed. Restaurants are expanding delivery and even offering grocery services as the preference for dining at home persists. Household electricity consumption in China probably increased from activities such as cooking and heating, according to IHS Markit, which said that residential demand rose by 2.4% in the first two months as people stayed in.
The increase in technology use also drove China’s power demand from the telecom and web-service sectors to rise by 27%, the consultancy said.
Overall, China power demand in the first quarter of the year fell 6.5% from the same period in 2019 to 1.57 trillion kilowatt-hours, China’s National Energy Administration said last week. Industry uses about 70% of the country’s electricity, while the commercial sector and households account for 14% each. – Bloomberg
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