DOE Issues Emergency Grid Order for 17 States as Heat Persists

The U.S. Department of Energy has issued an emergency order to keep the power on in 17 states as temperatures stay elevated (Reuters, subscription).

What’s going on: The order, issued last Sunday, “directed grid operator Southwest Power Pool to dispatch generation units as needed to maintain reliability for a territory that is home to 20 million people and stretches from North Dakota to Louisiana.”

• The order came after SPP warned that emergency conditions were likely to continue during periods of peak demand.
• The region is vulnerable “to power plant outages, declines in wind generation and disruptions in imported electricity.”
• States under the order include Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Utah, Texas and Wyoming.

What’s in it: The order authorized SPP to use backup generation resources as a last resort before declaring “a level three emergency alert,” often one of the final steps before rotating outages are put into place.

Why it’s important: Last week, a sudden loss of electricity imports from nearby grids left the grid operator with little in the way of reserves for outages.

• SPP avoided outages during the sudden electricity loss by appealing to consumers to conserve power.
• SPP is generally a net exporter of electricity because of a large base of wind power, but there has been a recent decline in wind generation.

A call for grid resilience: The NAM has long underscored the need for a stronger, more resilient grid, based on an all-of-the-above energy generation mix.

• Its “America on Hold” report highlights how permitting delays constrain energy and electricity infrastructure, including transmission projects, even as energy demand is rising across the board.