Unplanned power plant outages fell sharply during 2025/26 winter storms: FERC-NERC report — SkimNews
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- Eastern Interconnection peak unplanned outages totaled about 49,700 MW in January, down from 90,500 MW during Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022, according to the FERC-NERC report.
- ERCOT outages peaked at about 19,420 MW in January versus about 35,300 MW during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, a storm the Texas Department of State Health Services estimates killed 246 people.
- No manual load shedding occurred in ERCOT or the Eastern Interconnection despite U.S. electric use peaking at a record 666 GW and near-record natural gas demand.
- FERC Commissioner Lindsay See said meeting historic demand without manual load shed shows "significant progress" in cold-weather preparation, fuel readiness and coordination.
- Interregional power transfers were critical: MISO imports peaked at about 9 GW, mainly from PJM, and Florida exported power during Winter Storm Fern but imported during Winter Storm Gianna, FERC engineer Robert Clark said.
- DOE issued 15 first-ever emergency orders under the Federal Power Act directing backup generation at large loads to operate as a last resort during Fern and Gianna, though no one called on backup generation at data centers.
- FERC and NERC staff said the grid still needs better electric-gas coordination, improved load forecasting, and more infrastructure such as natural gas storage and pipeline capacity ahead of future Arctic events.
Why it matters: For the 246 people who died in Winter Storm Uri, this report is the receipts that cold-weather reforms — winterization, fuel assurance, interregional coordination — actually work: the grid met 666 GW of demand without a single rolling blackout. Regulators and grid operators now have hard data that Arctic-level demand is survivable, though electric-gas coordination gaps and untested data-center backup generation remain open reliability questions.
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