The Influence of North American Winter Weather Regimes on Electricity Load in the Central United States

Extreme wintertime cold in the central United States (US) is a key driver for excessive electricity demand and associated grid failures, producing substantial socioeconomic impacts. The February 2021 central US cold air outbreak demonstrated the impacts of cold-induced electrical grid failures with widespread power outages in Texas, and further outages in Oklahoma and Louisiana. Millions of Texans were left without heat for an extended period, on top of failures in natural gas production and water systems. Predicting such cold-induced demand surges is relatively understudied, especially on the subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) timescale of two weeks to two months. North American winter weather regimes, which are based on persistent atmospheric circulation patterns, are an atmospheric tool that are linked to potential S2S predictability of extreme cold in the central US. In this presentation, we quantify the relationship between winter weather regimes (November to March) and daily peak electricity load between 1999-2022 across 13 balancing authorities in the Southwest Power Pool (SPP). Anomalous ridging across Alaska, the West Coast of the US, and Greenland drive increases in demand across the SPP and increases the risk of extreme power demand by 20-100%. Conversely, anomalous troughing across the Arctic and North Pacific reduces central US daily peak demand, with a reduction of extreme demand risk of 50-80%. Coupled with recent work on the predictability of these regimes and extreme cold air outbreaks and similar work for European power markets, our study suggests that North American weather regimes may be an important long-lead predictor for North American electricity load and a useful tool for end users and stakeholders.