PJM is investigating whether the shortage of a mineral used in sequestering emissions from coal units is impacting generation in the RTO.

Mike Bryson, PJM’s senior vice president of operations, told RTO Insider on Thursday that at least two companies came forward in early August to the RTO, saying they were having trouble sourcing some of the chemicals associated with controlling emissions at coal plants. Bryson said the companies specifically cited trona, an evaporite mineral used as a source of sodium carbonate or soda ash, as one of the chemicals they were having difficulty locating.

In an email sent to stakeholders Aug. 18, PJM said the chemical shortages are “causing restrictions to unit output.”

PJM began wondering if any other units were having similar issues with sourcing chemicals, Bryson said, so the RTO released a survey on Aug. 19 to all generating units, asking them to report any problems through the eDART system. The survey is set to remain open for responses through Sept. 10 and is limited to only coal-fired resources and all generation owners.

Bryson said PJM has received a “few responses” to the survey, and the RTO will analyze the data with the Independent Market Monitor and do any reliability assessments.

“We want to try and get a picture of what it looks like for the rest of the fleet that happen to respond,” Bryson said.

Bryson said it’s common for PJM to conduct surveys with its companies, usually sending them out pre-summer or pre-winter to gauge readiness of generation units. He said PJM sent out a survey in the spring after the February winter storm to determine any localized impacts.

Depending on the level of response to the survey, Bryson said, PJM will report out results at a future Operating Committee meeting. He said PJM can’t report on the specific units involved because of confidentiality rules, but it may be able to direct companies having problems with sourcing to other stakeholders.

PJM companies had similar problem in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bryson said, with stakeholders reaching out and saying they were having problems sourcing different chemicals. He said the RTO had to be careful to stay out of the middle of the sourcing issue because of anticompetitive measures.

Bryson said PJM is currently working with the companies experiencing issues and the Monitor to make sure the shortages aren’t reflected in their bids and to understand any reliability issues. He said different companies use different chemicals to help with reducing sulfur dioxide emissions.

“There’s no near-term reliability issues at all,” Bryson said.

Trona

Trona, the primary source of sodium carbonate in the U.S., is mined in several different parts of the country, including California, Wyoming and Utah. It is used in everything from baking soda and paper to glass and chemical manufacturing. Some coal generation units use it to sequester carbon from flue gas.

In a survey released in June by the U.S. Geological Survey, soda ash production was 966,000 metric tons, a 3% increase compared with the previous month’s production and 58% more than that of June 2020. For the first six months of 2021, soda ash production was 5.84 million metric tons (Mt), 17% more than the revised total for the same period of 2020.

USGS said ending stocks of trona in June decreased to 225,000 tons, 16% less than those in May, as the “demand for soda ash returned to near pre-pandemic levels in recent months and resulted in the large increases in consumption, exports and production reported for the first six months of the year.”

Wyoming, the biggest producer of trona, produced 1.5 Mt in June, 5% more than production in May and 60% more than June 2020. For the first six months of 2021, USGS said, trona production was 8.27 Mt, 6% more than the revised total for the same period of 2020.

Other RTOs

A trona shortage in other RTOs and ISOs around the country doesn’t seem to be happening right now.

Officials at ERCOT said they were not aware of any supply chain issues with trona or any other chemical involved in generation. SPP officials said its operations group is “not aware of any coal units in our footprint experiencing shortages similar” to those being experienced in PJM.

MISO spokesman Brandon Morris said the RTO has “not observed a significant trend in outages among coal plants” from a chemical shortage, and the overall outage rates in the RTO are “comparable with last year.”

RTO Insider reporters Amanda Durish Cook, Tom Kleckner and John Funk contributed to this report.