Super Bowl Sunday and its effect on the power grid

One of ISO New England’s key functions is the daily reliable operation of the high-voltage power system, a six-state network of 8,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and more than 350 generators. To do this, the ISO works with generation and transmission companies to make sure that enough electricity is available for New England consumers. Ensuring that the supply equals the consumer demand for electricity at all times, our forecasters and other staff work around-the-clock to create and update a variety of demand, or “load,” forecasts. These short-term forecasts help us decide how many megawatts (MW) of electricity we need for a given week, day, or hour, and help us to manage the grid reliably through cold temperatures in the winter, high temperatures in the summer, and even Super Bowl games.

Factors that impact demand

ISO New England forecasters first consider the weather, which is the driving factor for electricity demand. Temperature, dew point, precipitation, cloud cover, and wind can have a dramatic effect on the system and consumer demand. The ISO uses outlooks provided by three different weather forecasting organizations to compile its weather forecast.

Historical data is also a factor in determining demand on a given day. This is especially true when forecasting for special holidays or high-profile sporting events that draw a large television viewing crowd. This information is gathered from a database that searches for similar days in operational history. For example, to forecast demand for the big game on Sunday, forecasters looked at consumer demand trends from past Super Bowls. Comparable days are analyzed and updated to account for factors such as population growth. The day of the week and information regarding the previous day's weather and demand are also taken into account. Once this information is compiled, forecasters publish the expected hourly system demand for the remainder of the current day and the next two days. The forecasters monitor the many variables that go into creating the forecast and, as conditions change, update their reports as needed.

Because generators are committed to run a day in advance based on the load forecast, having accurate forecasts is imperative to ensuring that the appropriate amount of generation is online or available to meet the demand at any given second.  

Football’s impact on the grid

The curves in the graph below represent the demand on the system on Super Bowl Sunday (in blue), and the previous Sunday, January 29 (in red). It’s easy to see the difference in the shapes of the load curves. An event as large as the Super Bowl synchs up the actions of a majority of people in New England, and because of this, electricity consumption spikes and dips throughout the game. For example, the Super Bowl Sunday load curve shows an uptick in demand that coincides with both half-time and the end of the game. That increase in demand is because people are taking actions that increase electricity use.

 

You can view the daily curve and track changes in New England’s electricity consumption through the ISO’s load-forecast graph. The graph compares the ISO’s demand forecast with actual, real-time load.