PJM’s weather normalized summer peak increased 950 MW in 2013, the largest increase since load growth resumed after the recession.
The 0.6% increase over 2012 is “no great shakes but moving in the right direction,” PJM’s John Reynolds told the Planning Committee during a briefing last week.
The peak was 0.2% (368 MW) below PJM’s forecast. “It’s been a challenging time for us for load forecasting since the recession,” said Steve Herling, vice president of planning. “The primary input is econometrics — over which we have no control.”
Peak diversity for 2013 as 0.3%, much lower than the forecasted 4.3%, as a result of the single RTO-wide heat wave July 15-19.
It was the first summer that the top five coincident peaks have come in the same calendar week since PJM started collecting the data. “The entire story of the summer of 2013 can be told in one week in the middle of July,” Reynolds said.
