Power grids are vulnerable to wild swings in weather, from crippling winter cold to oppressive summer heat. But unseasonably warm early fall weather has energy officials taking steps this week to reduce the risk of outages in some parts of the country.
The Energy Department issued an order intended to make it easier for backup power to kick into gear in 13 Mid-Atlantic States and the District of Columbia, if needed, from Tuesday through Friday. On Wednesday, temperatures were in the upper 80s and 90s across a broad swath of the region, National Weather Service data showed.
The order does not mean outages are expected or that an emergency is imminent. It is a precautionary tool, coming after a period of higher-than-normal temperatures in late August and September, as demand surged during the start of fall, when power plants are traditionally offline for maintenance.
The energy secretary, Chris Wright, said the order would help ensure Americans have “secure electricity by making additional power generation, including backup power, available to use as needed.”
What prompted the order?
The emergency order was issued on Monday in response to an application by the grid operator PJM Interconnection, which coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity to at least 67 million people in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia.
“We’re sometimes called air traffic controllers of the power grid,” a company profile says.
The order gives the grid operator the authority to tap into backup generators, like those using diesel, to be used to support power grids if needed. Such a step would be taken before issuing a level 3 emergency alert, in which customers are asked to use less power or PJM takes other steps to avoid grid failure, such as by issuing rolling blackouts.
The emergency order allows PJM to direct data centers and other sites with high energy usage to switch to backup generators if necessary. It also provides “temporary relief from environmental permit restrictions for generating units,” the company said.
But the warmer days at the start of the fall season and into October are presenting a new challenge to grid operators. Demand for power is growing faster just as plants are usually taken offline, leaving fewer days for critical maintenance work.
“This is the new reality that grid operators are facing,” Jeff Shields, a spokesman for PJM Interconnection, said on Wednesday. “Planned maintenance season will continue to present risks that we formerly faced only in summer and winter,” he added.
What does this mean for customers?
There were no reports of widespread outages. Utility companies usually keep customers informed if there are specific outages or ask them to reduce their power use.
Novec, which serves Northern Virginia, said on its social media account on Tuesday that crews were restoring power to a section of Prince William County, southwest of Washington, D.C., which has a population of about 500,000. It did not say what caused the outage.
The federal emergency order is not meant to signal to customers the need to take any precautionary measures.
Mr. Shields said the order represented a “last resort.”
“For perspective, the D.O.E. has issued a similar order at least nine times this year, and we have never had to use it,” he said. “It is another tool that we can use to protect the reliability of the system.”
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