America’s largest power grid has issued another “Maximum Generation Alert” and “Load Management Alert” as temperatures soar across the eastern half of the U.S. This comes amid a national trend of retiring fossil fuel power plants and replacing them with unreliable ‘green’ energy sources—creating a severe mismatch between baseload capacity and rising demand, and raising the risk of rolling blackouts in some areas.
PJM Interconnection, the operator of the largest U.S. power grid serving 65 million people across 13 states and D.C., issued a “Maximum Generation Alert and Load Management Alert” for Wednesday, ordering all available power generation to run at full capacity to ensure power demand is met during peak hours amid tightening conditions.
PJM’s grid alerts are procedural and inform neighboring grids of potential export curtailments, advising transmission/generation owners to defer maintenance. Today’s peak demand forecast is around 145,000 MW across the service district.
The NOAA Climate Prediction Center’s latest 6–10 day temperature outlook map shows that much of PJM’s customers will experience temperatures well above average levels for this time of year.
None of this should come as a surprise to readers: we’ve extensively covered PJM’s repeated warnings, shared a Goldman Sachs note highlighting that the grid is “getting critically tight,” and urged those at risk to consider adding backup power generation at home.
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