Important Takeaways:

• Nation at risk of winter blackouts as power grid remains under strain
• A sweeping portion of the country that extends from Texas to the Canadian border is not adequately equipped for tough winter conditions, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned in a forecast released Wednesday. The report is a sobering assessment of a power grid that continues to fray and suffer from underinvestment, despite promises by politicians and regulators to shore it up following deadly blackouts in recent years
• “Much of North America is at an elevated risk of insufficient energy supplies this winter and is highly exposed to risks of energy emergencies in extreme winter conditions,” the regulator, known as NERC, wrote in a statement that accompanied the report.
• A major concern is the potential for disruptions in natural gas generation, as power plants and the infrastructure that delivers fuel to them are destabilized by the strain of extreme cold. It is the pattern that played out last year during Winter Storm Elliott, which resulted in cascading outages throughout the eastern United States just before Christmas.
• The regional grid that serves 15 states from Arkansas to Wyoming will be operating with significantly lower backup energy reserves than last year as a result of some power plants coming off line and demand for electricity in the region increasing. NERC warned that while the region has the resources it needs to make it through a normal winter, extreme cold weather could “result in shortfalls that can trigger energy emergencies.”
• The rapid addition of renewable energy onto the grid presents its own challenges, the report warns, which could inflame debate about the extent to which the energy transition disrupts reliability. NERC officials noted, for example, that the installation of large volumes of new solar power in Texas will do little to help the state through the winter, as demand tends to peak after sundown. But NERC’s findings make clear that problems with fossil fuel generation bear a large share of responsibility for the wobbly state of the nation’s electricity system.

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