Power grids held up this week as ice brought down local power lines and a deep freeze tested the reliance on natural gas for so much electricity in the eastern half of the U.S.
About 1 million people lost power starting Sunday. Residents of Nashville, Tennessee, and its suburbs saw their power go out, and outages hit areas of Mississippi and northern Louisiana. But the high-voltage grids from Texas to the mid-Atlantic states made it to the end of the week without frozen gas wells, pipelines and transformers triggering widespread outages.
“Things are holding up,” said John Moura, reliability director of the North American Electric Reliability Corp. the grid watchdog.
Still to come is a nor’easter forming along the East Coast. Bomb cyclone wind gusts along the Carolina coasts and more cold in New England are expected to keep the pressure on grids in the East.
