Study: NC at elevated risk of blackouts as strained infrastructure faces peak winter demand

According to a report from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NERC), North Carolina is at an elevated risk blackouts this winter as a damaged and vulnerable electric grid faces the high-energy demands of winter weather.

The study finds Hurricanes Helene and Milton have left poles, transformers and substations battered, and extreme cold could push the grid to its breaking point.

While the Carolinas have historically been a summer-peaking area, with demand highest during the sultry summer months, the region, labeled SERC-East, is beginning to have higher peak demand forecasts in winter. SERC-East is an assessment area within the SERC Regional Entity. SERC-East includes North Carolina and South Carolina.

North Carolinians have experienced the fallout from peak winter demand overwhelming the electric grid before; during Christmastime of 2022, when a polar cold snap brought plunging overnight temperatures led to rolling black outs on Christmas Eve. The timing was a complicating factor, as solar generation assets — upon which North Carolina increasingly relies due to Carbon Plan considerations — were necessarily unavailable during the overnight period.

In the intervening years, energy demand has grown further in the region as marked population and electrification growth has continued apace. What’s more, extreme summer weather in the form of hurricanes have wreaked havoc on grid infrastructure.

The report highlights outages of multiple generation units totaling 1,583 MW have return-to-service dates in December, but if these units are delayed, it will reduce the amount of generation available during weather-induced peaking demand.

“A severe cold weather event extending to the south could lead to energy emergencies as operators face sharp increases in generator forced outages and electricity demand,” reads the report. “Above-normal winter peak load and outage conditions could result in the need for operating mitigations (i.e., demand response and transfers) and EEAs. Load shedding is unlikely but may be needed under wide-area cold weather events.”

Carbon Plan diversions of priority toward solar and wind energy sources have resulted in reliability issues.

“SERC-East shows some risk under high-load conditions during winter morning hours around 8 a.m., prior to substantial solar resource output,” reads the report. Despite this, the NC Energy Policy Council recently issued recommendations to lawmakers and utility regulators to introduce more solar and wind energy to the overall generation mix.

Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life and also research editor at the John Locke Foundation, writes in a recent report that “policymakers will make North Carolinians much worse off by trying to foist expensive and unreliable energy resources on them.”

What’s more, extreme winter weather could affect even the more reliable energy infrastructure like natural gas assets. NERC experts note in their study how “natural gas supply to generators is also at risk in extreme cold weather due to production and delivery issues coupled with potential limited regional pipeline capacity.”

Altogether, the report warns that, as we approach the official start to the winter season, North Carolina and the SERC-East region face elevated risks of blackouts during the coldest days of the year.

Read the full report here.

The post Study: NC at elevated risk of blackouts as strained infrastructure faces peak winter demand first appeared on Carolina Journal.