Electric power generation and transmission are not growing fast enough to meet the rapidly rising demand from new data centers and other large electricity customers, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Thursday.
The findings on North America’s bulk power system’s reliability and security come at a time when pressure to address affordability and electricity demand is ramping up among voters and increasingly becoming a political liability for the Trump administration. It also comes in the wake of Winter Storm Fern, which pushed the electrical grid to its limits and led to more than a million consumers temporarily losing electricity.
“The overall resource adequacy outlook for the North American [power supply] is worsening,” NERC said in its new report. Electricity peak demand and energy growth forecasts over the report’s 10-year assessment period “continue to climb higher than at any point in the past two decades,” NERC added.
NERC identified several areas across North America that are either at “elevated” or “high risk” of experiencing challenges to meet demand over the next five years. That group includes PJM Interconnection, the grid operator serving the largest customer base in the country. MISO, ERCOT, WECC-Basin and WECC-Northwest are also likely to face insufficient resource supply during that time, the report said.
