Mid-afternoon July 6th, 1999: Driven by a heat wave, peak demand hit a record 11,850 MW in the Consolidated Edison's service territory, well over the utility's expectation. The stress imposed on the system at peak time led to dispersed outages later that day.
The solar energy resource on July 6th was substantial
as seen in the figure below. This event confirms the contention that a
dispersed PV resource in the New York metro area*, could be counted on
to meet regional peak loads at time of maximum stress, delivering power
right at the points of use.
* Space for PV deployment in the New York metro area is not an issue: Roof tops, exclusion zones and eventually parking lots could support the deployment of many 100s MW of PV.
Analysis made possible thanks to funding from NREL (Christy Herig, project mamnager)