U.S. power grid holds up in cold; warning issued

By Alton Wallace
The Center Square

The electric grid powering much of the U.S. through a harsh stretch of winter has largely held up, but there is an increasing risk of supply shortfalls, an industry observer said on Thursday.

The risk has grown in recent years as demand increases from data centers trying to keep up with the artificial intelligence boom and the digital economy. At the same time, generation plants that burn coal, oil and other fuels are being replaced by solar and batteries and natural gas-fired plants.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation said uncertainty and slow development of new sources of power generation are driving “heightened concerns” that the nation’s electricity providers will not be able to keep up with the demand over the next 10 years.

The warning came as most of the eastern half of the U.S. entered the ninth consecutive day of colder-than-normal temperatures and prepared for more frigid weather. So far, the nation’s electric grid has held up without widespread outages, although tens of thousands of residents across Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi remained without power on Sunday, a week after Winter Storm Fern blew through the region.

The Corporation forecasts that over the next decade, the demand for electricity will grow by 246 gigawatts during the winter but by only about 224 gigawatts in the summer, reflecting changing patterns of electricity usage. Planners, market operators and regulators should expedite new power resources to meet growing demand, and deactivations of existing electric plants should be carefully managed, the Corporation said.

“This assessment is not a prediction of failure but an early warning on the trajectory of risk,” said John Moura, the organization’s director of reliability assessment and performance analysis. “The path forward is still manageable but only if planned resources come online and on time.”

Prior to the winter storm, the U.S. Department of Energy directed electricity generators in almost 16 states and the District of Columbia to deploy backup power resources at data centers and major industrial facilities in order to lessen pressure on the grid and reduce the likelihood of blackouts.

Grid operators, including ERCOT in Texas, reported that regional transmission networks remained stable through the storm, which dumped snow and ice from north Texas to the East Coast.

PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, said in its latest seven-day forecast on Friday that it expected demand to peak that day at approximately 141.9 gigawatts, near the all-time winter record high of 143.7 gigawatts set one year ago. Temperatures were expected to remain below freezing for several more days in the 13 Midwest and ‌Mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C., served by PJM.

On Friday, generation outages in PJM’s service area were expected to be about 15 gigawatts, or ​about 11% of total capacity.

In Texas, where rolling blackouts occurred during a period of prolonged cold in February 2021, power generation in the state’s massive wind power industry was unimpeded by the cold during the recent arctic blast, helping to stabilize the grid, said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston.

“The weatherization requirements seem to have helped,” said Hirs, referring to a program adopted by Texas officials following the 2021 storm that require power generators, natural gas producers and pipeline operators to take steps to mitigate the effects of frigid temperatures on electricity generation. Temperatures were not as cold in the 2026 storm as in 2021, Hirs added.

In Texas, wind energy accounts for 25% to 29% of the state’s total annual electricity generation, behind natural gas at 40% to 50%, according to data provided by ERCOT.

Hirs said there were no problems with distribution of natural gas inside Texas in the storm, unlike in 2021, and battery power added incremental electricity to the grid at peak usage times early in the morning. Equipment that helps prevent turbines from the icing that occurred in 2021 allowed wind power to continue functioning during the storm, he said.

Hirs said wholesale electricity prices in Texas reached over a $1 a kilowatt hour at one time in the cold blast, indicating that problems remain. “The average price of electricity Texas was well over a dollar a kilowatt hour in the wholesale market at one point, and we know it doesn’t cost them anything like that much to bring power on the grid – this was just price gouging – and consumers will pay for it later,” said Hirs.

The grid in the Northeast has seen disruptions in recent days, but not widespread outages, said Will Rampe, an energy policy analyst at the Institute for Energy Research.

Rampe noted that electricity supplies from New England Clean Energy Connect, a new 1-gigawatt transmission line that started running in mid-January, were not able to supply power to Massachusetts from Hydro-Quebec during Winter Storm Fern because Quebec needed the energy for its own use.

To fill the gap, Rampe said, New England had to fire up old oil turbines, which produced almost 40% of the region’s power on Sunday during the height of the storm. Hydro-Quebec will have to compensate the New England utilities for not meeting its commitment, although the penalty is unknown, Rampe said.

As the frigid temperatures moved into the region, Maine and New England’s wind generation resources performed well, providing more than 1.5 gigawatts, or roughly 10%, of the total load for the regional grid. But as temperatures plummeted to historic lows on Jan. 27 and the wind slowed, these plants contributed only 754 megawatts, or about 4%, of the New England’s power.

“Policymakers in state capitols in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have pushed for more wind and solar versus what actually served the grid during the times of the greatest emergency,” Rampe said. “New England relied on oil to produce 40% of its electricity at peak demand during the storm last weekend. This shows the importance of reliable sources of electricity and that efforts to restrict natural gas and coal from the energy mix do not serve consumers’ interests.”