Headline: Attack stamps out N.Y. power crisis -- Destruction of World Trade Center cuts demand, price sharply [excerpts]

Source: The Wall Street Journal, 14 September 2001

URL: http://www.msnbc.com/news/628808.asp

In a withering hail of glass and fire, New York City’s power crisis was snuffed out this week. Hundreds of megawatts of “load,” or demand, suddenly disappeared from the power system and some experts believe the city won’t return to previous levels of electrical demand until 2003.

The calamity has produced “the most macabre form of demand reduction in U.S. history,” said Edward Krapels, director of gas and power research for Energy Security Analysis Inc., a New-York-based research firm.

Before the terrorist attacks, the city had been walking a thin line between sufficiency and shortage. In fact, about 400 megawatts of emergency peaking plants were constructed in the city this summer, and grid officials hoped it would be enough to satisfy near-term needs. It now appears New York City may have enough surplus power to become, at times, a minor exporter of electricity to other parts of the state.

Already, the shift in the relationship between supply and demand is having a leveling influence on power prices…

...[T]he loss of the World Trade Center eliminates about 200 megawatts of demand, an amount equivalent to half the output of a major power plant.

“It was such a horrible event that it almost seems sacrilegious to talk about its impact on power markets,” said Bill Muesler, chief executive of the New York Independent System Operator.

But, at least in the short term, it has reshaped the state’s market...

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), September 14, 2001

Answers

That's wild. What a turnabout.

-- Buck (bigbuck@trailways.net), September 14, 2001.