US power grids serving roughly one-third of the population are straining under a heatwave that collides with planned off-season maintenance outages. Temperatures are expected to rise more than 25F above normal, with highs near 90F in Washington, DC, according to the US Weather Prediction Center. PJM Interconnection LLC, which serves 67 million people from the Mid-Atlantic to Chicago, declared a low-level emergency Tuesday and urged power plants to delay maintenance. PJM expects to secure enough resources to meet demand this week, but finding time for critical maintenance is becoming more difficult.
About 60 gigawatts of capacity remained offline Tuesday morning, while demand was expected to reach roughly 112 gigawatts. The situation highlights dual challenges: severe weather and soaring demand for always-on power straining transmission and generation resources. Operators have less time to repair overburdened power plants and transmission lines as sudden cold snaps and warm spells in fall and spring boost electricity usage.
Concerns are mounting that summer heat is lasting longer and the fall season is growing shorter, particularly in areas with fast demand growth in Texas and on PJM's grid. Plants that skip outages for repairs are more prone to breaking down when needed most. The largest Texas grid withstood weeks of extreme, triple-digit heat this summer thanks to wind, solar and batteries, but PJM has not seen a similar push to add storage despite building out wind and solar capacity.
Source: Bloomberg Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing