reliability
-
Legal & Regulatory
PJM, Facing Capacity Shortage as Early as 2026/2027 Delivery Year, Agrees to Lower Auction Price Cap
PJM Interconnection and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro have settled a lawsuit over PJM’s capacity market pricing, agreeing to lower the grid operator’s auction price cap from over $500/MW-day to $325/MW-day. The move comes as PJM acknowledges a capacity shortage could affect its system as early as the 2026/2027 delivery year. The agreement announced on Jan. […]
-
T&D
Restoration Efforts Continue Following Complete Blackout of Puerto Rico’s Power Grid
LUMA, Puerto Rico’s electric power transmission and distribution system operator, has struggled to restore power to some of its customers in the wake of an outage that left the entire island without power on Dec. 31 at 5:30 a.m. local time. The company activated its Emergency Operations Center soon after the event occurred and said […]
Tagged in: -
Legal & Regulatory
Five Critical Insights from NERC’s 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment
Well over half of North America faces a potential shortage of electricity supplies in the coming years, compounded by surging demand growth, accelerating generator retirements, and delays in resource development, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has warned in its latest 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA). The designated electric reliability organization’s (ERO’s) annual 10-year […]
-
Trends
Texas Mandates Cryptomining Registration, Power Demand Reporting, to Bolster Grid Reliability
The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) has adopted a rule for reliability purposes requiring cryptocurrency mining facilities in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region to register with the state and annually report details about their location, ownership, form of business, and demand for electricity. The PUCT’s new rule, adopted on Nov. […]
-
T&D
$3B in Transmission Substation and Line Projects Proposed in Pacific Northwest
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) has identified 13 new transmission substation and line projects designed to reinforce the Pacific Northwest’s electric grid. If constructed, these projects would accommodate regional load growth and enable the BPA to add thousands of megawatts of new wind and solar generation, and battery storage to the federal grid. Combined, the […]
-
Sustainability
3 Steps for Utility Companies to Get Started with Undergrounding
The U.S. electric grid is under more strain than ever to support exponential electricity demand due to artificial intelligence (AI), data centers, electric vehicles, and hotter temperatures. Its infrastructure is made up of 180 million power poles spread out over 5.5 million miles that are frequently bombarded with increasingly severe storms and weather. Worsening SAIDI […]
Tagged in: -
Gas
Major Project Rejected in Texas’ Flagship Dispatchable Power Loan Program
The Texas Energy Fund (TEF), a flagship loan program designed to boost the state’s dispatchable generation, faced its first setback on Sept. 4 when the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) denied Aegle Power’s loan application for a 1,292-MW combined cycle generating facility in Harlingen—its second-largest shortlisted facility. The PUCT said Aegle Power’s application, filed […]
-
Legal & Regulatory
Supreme Court Showdown: EPA Defends Carbon Capture Amid Power Industry Backlash
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has doubled down on its stance that carbon capture is “adequately demonstrated” in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court as part of a bid to urge the high court to allow the agency’s contentious Carbon Pollution Standards to remain in effect while legal challenges continue. The Supreme Court […]
-
Trends
PJM Capacity Auction Prices Surge Over Nine-Fold, Signal Urgent Need for New Power Generation
Prices at PJM Interconnection’s 2025/2026 base residual auction (BRA) spiked to $269.92/MW-day for most resources in the wholesale power market, pointing to a tightening supply-demand balance that could have significant implications for the regional transmission organization (RTO). The 2025/2026 BRA—a competitive capacity auction that procures power supply resources in advance of the delivery year to […]
-
Commentary
Let’s Get the Lights Back On, Then Act on Beryl’s Lessons to Harden Houston’s Power Grid
After Hurricane Beryl laid a path of destruction through the greater Houston area, the storm’s impact on the local power grid is having an outsized effect on the ongoing debate about the future of Texas’ energy and electrical infrastructure. The lessons we take from this incident, which left 2.5 million people without power at the height […]