PJM Interconnection

20Mar

Missing the Heart of the Story

Over the past few weeks, both The Washington Post and The New York Times have discovered the sudden reemergence of soaring electricity demand and its collision with the nation’s teetering supply of power. The Post feature, which ran on the front page the morning of the State of the Union, was dramatically titled, “Amid explosive […]
01Mar

EPA Misses the Point on Grid Reliability

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has picked a winner in the energy markets and, in doing so, the American people will undoubtedly be the losers. Yesterday, the news broke that existing natural gas power plants will be exempted from the so-called Clean Power Plan 2.0. While EPA claims that a new comprehensive rule on […]
14Feb

Not So Fast, We Need Those Plants

Concern about its ability to keep the lights on has led FirstEnergy, one of the nation’s largest regulated utilities, to walk back the proposed closure of two of its coal power plants. The decision to continue the operation of the utility’s two West Virginia coal plants past 2030 – the Fort Martin and Harrison power stations […]
17Jan

The Next Winter Grid Disaster

If the lights went out for millions of Americans on a frigid day would there be much surprise? There would be shock – and there would be plenty of finger pointing – but “surprise” is a word that might be tellingly missing. In fact, some major regional grid operators might be more likely to be […]
20Nov

Can the Biden EPA Accept Reality?

As The Wall Street Journal recently put it, “the energy transition is getting a dose of reality.” In the U.S., offshore wind projects are evaporating, transmission lines remain extraordinarily difficult to build, the nation’s first planned small modular reactor project was just cancelled and dozens of renewable-power developers are trying to rewrite contracts to recoup […]
15Nov

With All Alarms Sounding, EPA Has Few Answers and Less Planning

In the hours before the regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sat down with stakeholders from across the country to discuss the nation’s deteriorating grid reliability, the urgency of the gathering was underscored by a new and deeply unsettling winter reliability assessment. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) found in its most […]
08Nov

Will FERC Hold EPA to Account?

This Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is holding its annual technical conference on grid reliability. Of particular interest is the attention FERC and its expert witnesses will give to examining the impact the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) so-called Clean Power Plan 2.0 will have on reliability. FERC is digging into reliability at […]
04Oct

The Gas Reliability Gap

The U.S. has a natural gas problem. While regulatory pressure continues to place an ever-greater burden on the gas fleet and gas infrastructure to provide dispatchable power when it’s needed most, the gas system is again and again showing it’s simply not up to the challenge. The latest alarming example comes from the after-action report […]
15Sep

Walking the Reliability Tightrope

Just last week, the Texas grid narrowly avoided blackouts as the state’s grid operator, ERCOT, instituted emergency operating conditions. It was the latest sign that as power demand soars, operators are walking a tightrope to manage grids ever-more dependent on variable sources of power, policy-constrained supplies of thermal generation and inadequate infrastructure. As E&E News […]
30Aug

The Energy Policy Torpedo

The nation’s grid reliability watchdog added an alarming new dimension to its regular warnings over the eroding state of the nation’s grid reliability. For the first time, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is warning that energy policy now directly threatens reliability. In the latest edition of NERC’s Reliability Risk Priorities Report, the authors […]