How the grid can ride out winter storms

Texas fared much better this time around. After 2021, the state shored up its grid, adding winter weatherization for power plants and transmission systems. Texas has also seen a huge flood of batteries come online, which has greatly helped the grid during winter demand peaks, especially in the early mornings. Texas was also simply lucky that this storm was less severe there, as one expert told Inside Climate News this week.

Here on the East Coast, we’re not out of the woods yet. The snow has stopped falling, but grids are still facing high electricity demand because of freezing temperatures. (I’ve certainly been living under my heated blanket these last few days.)

PJM could see a peak power demand of 130 gigawatts for seven straight days, a winter streak that the local grid has never experienced, according to an update to the utility’s site on Tuesday morning.

The US Department of Energy issued emergency orders to several grid operators, including PJM, that allow power plants to run while basically ignoring emissions regulations. The department also issued orders allowing several grids to tell data centers and other facilities to begin using backup generators. (This is good news for reliability but bad news for clean air and the climate, since these power sources are often incredibly emissions-intensive.)

We here on the East Coast could learn a thing or two from Texas so we don’t need to resort to these polluting emergency measures to keep the lights on. More energy storage could be a major help in future winter storms, lending flexibility to the grid to help ride out the worst times, Solomon says. Getting offshore wind online could also help, since those facilities typically produce reliable power in the winter.

No one energy source will solve the massive challenge of building and maintaining a resilient grid. But as we face the continued threat of extreme storms, renewables might actually help us weather them.

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