An Arctic blast that forecasters expect to send temperatures plummeting across much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains could freeze equipment and trigger widespread power outages if operators aren’t adequately protecting their systems, warned the top U.S. grid monitor.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp., the interstate grid’s security monitor, issued an alert to the power and gas industries this week with a personal plea from its chief executive, Jim Robb. Action was essential, he said over NERC’s YouTube channel, “to help us avoid the consequences of events such as we saw in Texas in 2021 and in the mid-Atlantic in 2022 with winter storms Uri and Elliott.”
At least 240 people died and electricity and gas shortages left more than 4 million people without power during the nearly weeklong Texas freeze. Then during Christmas week of 2022, frozen gas wells and processing infrastructure nearly caused a catastrophic, long-lasting loss of gas heating for 1.1 million New York City utility customers. Farther south, Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority had to impose rolling power blackouts to keep their energy systems in balance.
NERC’s warning followed similar messages from the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, forecasting very dangerous freezing rain, ice storms and heavy snowfall beginning Sunday across the central U.S. and lower Great Lakes region into the southeast.
