by Kevin Killough
The North American Reliability Corporation's latest long-term assessment warns that half the U.S. will face increased risks of blackouts during winter storms as demand for electricity increases while coal- and natural gas-fired power plants are retired.
The North American grid watchdog Thursday published its annual long-term reliability assessment, and the analysis offers a sharp warning about the growing threat of blackouts across much of the United States in the coming years.
“The overall resource adequacy outlook for the North American BPS is worsening: In the 2025 LTRA [long-term reliability assessment], NERC finds that 13 of 23 assessment areas face resource adequacy challenges over the next 10 years,” the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) report states.
During January’s Winter Storm Fern, many parts of the U.S. grid neared the point where demand exceeded supply. If the grid continues to shut down fossil-fuel generation and tries to meet demand with intermittent wind and solar, according to NERC, more Americans will face blackouts when demand is high.
Language grows more dire each year
As electricity demand grows, including data centers, the nation’s grid is relying on intermittent wind and solar resources to meet that growing demand, NERC explains, while plants running on reliable coal and natural gas are slated for retirement over the next five years. “The continuing shift in the resource mix toward weather-dependent resources and less fuel diversity increases risks of supply shortfalls during winter months,” NERC warns.
The language in these annual assessments from NERC has gone from describing maintaining resource adequacy on the renewable-heavy grid from being a challenge to being a problem.
“The electricity sector is undergoing significant and rapid change that presents new challenges and opportunities for reliability. With appropriate insight, careful planning, and continued support, the electricity sector will continue to navigate the associated challenges in a manner that maintains reliability and resilience,” NERC stated in its 2019 LTRA.
By 2023, NERC’s assessment had begun warning that large portions of the nation’s grid would be stressed during periods of high demand. “The North American BPS [bulk power system] is on the cusp of large-scale growth, bringing reliability challenges and opportunities to a grid that was already amid unprecedented change,” NERC reported.
Last year’s assessment no longer talked of opportunities. “NERC finds that most of the North American BPS faces mounting resource adequacy challenges over the next 10 years as surging demand growth continues and thermal generators announce plans for retirement,” the watchdog warned.
Fossil-powered plant retirements
The 2026 assessment forecast that by 2030, half of the U.S. grid will face either an elevated risk of blackouts or a high risk of blackouts, including Texas, the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and central Atlantic states.
Isaac Orr, vice president of research for Always On Energy Research, called the report “startling.”
The increased demand, according to the report, will add approximately 245 gigawatts, or a 35% increase, to the grid over the next 10 years. The total sales growth in electricity between 2010 and 2024, Orr said, was just 6%. So, the projected growth is expected to be enormous. The report urges policymakers and utilities to “keep plans for deactivating existing generators flexible.”
“Translated into English: If the first rule of holes is to stop digging, the first rule of electric grid reliability is to stop shutting down reliable power plants, including those powered by coal,” Orr said.
Grid performance during winter storm
Last week’s Winter Storm Fern saw many areas of the U.S. come very close to blackouts as grids were stretched to their limits by weather-related demand. While many people experienced blackouts, these were not due to generation resource inadequacy.
Orr and Mitch Rolling, director of research for Always On Energy Research, explained on their “Energy Bad Boys” Substack that there were “close calls and some uncomfortable lessons” for some parts of the grid during the storm.
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) — a regional trade organization (RTO), which plans, operates and manages the bulk power system across a region — came close to having to take high-demand customers off the grid — called load shedding — to prevent blackouts.
This was likely, Orr and Rolling wrote, because wind speeds cratered during the storm, leaving the RTO’s wind resources dropping from 60% of their capacity factor down to just 7% on Saturday.
New England ended up weathering the story by burning oil. At 5 p.m. local time on Saturday, the grid manager in the region was deriving 37% of its generation from oil, 25% from natural gas, 17% from nuclear, 12% from hydroelectric, and 8% from renewables, according to Meredith Angwin, a retired utility chemist and author of “Shorting the Grid.”
Typically, New England burns no oil, and only about 0.4% of the U.S. total electricity generation comes from it, most of which is in Hawaii. The New England grid also was cut off from hydroelectric imports from Canada, as the neighbors up north cut off exports to meet their own demand. As homes in New England demanded more natural gas, competing with generators, the grid had to burn oil to keep from collapsing.
Kerry Clapp, an energy consultant, explains in his “A Pragmatic Approach to Energy” Substack that the Texas grid saw wind and solar outages increase as the temperature dropped. Battery storage provided a “negligible” amount of power to the grid, while coal, natural gas and nuclear kept the lights on, Clapp wrote.
Policy choices matter
Orr and Rolling point out that Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s orders earlier this year that kept coal plants running may have prevented shortfalls.
The data on those facilities’ output during the storm isn’t currently available, but three plants in Michigan and Indiana that were prevented from shutdowns could have provided nearly as much as MISO’s entire wind resources early Saturday morning, when the wind farms were only producing a fraction of their capacity, according to Rolling and Orr.
Orr told Just the News that looking at the nation’s grid performance during Winter Storm Fern shows that NERC’s warnings are not merely hypothetical.
“NERC’s analysis is a clear warning that surging electricity demand and announced generator retirements mean much of the United States may not be able to avoid rolling blackouts during the next winter storm. However, it is important to understand that this outcome is not a foregone conclusion and that policy choices matter,” Orr said.
Kevin Killough is the energy reporter for Just The News. You can follow him on X for more coverage.
Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/grid-watchdog-warns-over-reliance-wind-and-solar-will-make-winter-blackouts
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