Extreme cold still poses reliability challenge for North American power generators

• 5 months ago (2023-12-12)
• David Flin

North America 999 Transmission 181

---

The North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) said that freezing conditions still remain a reliability concern for power generators.

NERC said in a report: “Low temperatures and freezing conditions also caused generators to derate units and in some cases caused forced outages due to equipment failure in the freezing conditions.” Referring to Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, it said that higher than expected demand and forecasting errors led to grid operators implementing rolling blackouts to prevent cascading outages.

In May 2003, NERC had issued its highest severity level alert for the first time to increase the readiness of operators and users of power grids ahead of winter. In response, 62 operators of power plants said their capacity was still susceptible to the same issue. Most of these were wind farms referring to the issue of blade icing.

In November, NERC said in its winter outlook that more than half of the US and parts of Canada could fall short of electricity during extreme cold again this winter due to lacking natural gas infrastructure.