Power Grid Emergency Declared Across 13 US States in Urgent Bid to Prevent Blackouts
By CHRIS MELORE, US DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR
A power grid emergency affecting more than 60 million Americans has been declared as the US government scrambles to prevent outages across several states.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a short-term emergency order under the Federal Power Act, allowing regional power grid operator PJM Interconnection to push past normal pollution limits to keep the lights on.
PJM manages electricity for residents in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington DC.
The emergency order went into effect on Tuesday and is expected to last through Friday due to a sudden and unseasonably warm spike in temperatures.
Forecasters with AccuWeather have said temperatures in the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic will jump into the 70s and 80s, including in all 13 states PJM covers.
Officials feared that the sudden demand for power, as millions turn fans and air conditioners back on, might overtax PJM’s grid, which had already shut down several power plants and transmission lines for seasonal repairs.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said the move aimed at reducing the risk of widespread blackouts across the Mid-Atlantic during this week’s heat blast.
Wright also blamed the Biden Administration for weakening the nation’s electrical grid by restricting energy production using coal and natural gas in favor of intermittent sources like wind and solar, allegedly leaving the US more vulnerable to power outages.
The US Department of Energy has issued an emergency order to prevent blackouts from hitting up to 13 states this week (Stock Image)
Wright said in a statement: ‘This order will help ensure millions of American families and businesses across the mid-Atlantic have access to affordable, reliable, and secure electricity by making additional power generation, including backup power, available to use as needed.’
The secretary also slammed the previous DOE leadership group for allegedly placing the country in a dire position that depends on less reliable forms of energy for electricity.
‘While past leaders’ energy subtraction policies have made the grid more vulnerable to the risk of blackouts when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, this administration remains committed to using every available tool to prevent blackouts,’ he added Monday.
PJM is the nonprofit organization that runs the regional power grid in the Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley and Northeast, coordinating each state’s local electric companies so electricity flows reliably.
On social media, PJM said the DOE order would ‘not require any action from customers,’ meaning Americans were not being asked to lower their electricity usage during the short-term emergency.
A spokesperson for PJM told Newsweek that the tight grid conditions were being caused by more people using electricity while many generators were being serviced before the winter.
They added that major transmission projects had also required power lines to be taken down for safety reasons, leaving fewer systems available to handle this week’s sudden demand.
The special order, declared under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, lets power plants run past their yearly restrictions on producing air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2), particulate matter (PM) and ammonia.
PJM Interconnection has been ordered to exceed emissions limits in order to prevent power outages in the Mid-Atlantic states as temperatures rise and energy demands increases
Whatever pollution is created during the emergency is not counted towards the power company’s emissions limits for the year.
It also allows PJM to force specific power plants, mostly natural-gas plants and some oil- or coal-burning facilities, to reopen and run if the grid needs them, even if those plants are normally shut down by pollution rules.
Normally, the DOE order is issued as a measure of last resort to prevent rolling blackouts.
It is typically ordered to prevent the country from reaching an ‘Energy Emergency Alert Level 3,’ the highest and most serious level of emergency alert related to the nation’s electrical grid.
That means a power grid operator has exhausted all other options and is at the point of needing to start controlled outages to keep the overall system from collapsing.
Since 2025, however, the Trump Administration has been using the emergency decree regularly to combat extreme summer heat waves and winter storms or cold snaps, where Americans will be using more energy than normal – straining the grid.
While the DOE only issued this same order about 20 times between 2000 and 2024, the Trump Administration has declared a power grid emergency more than 60 times in the last two years.
The DOE has also been using the order to prevent certain power plants from shutting down permanently, which has drawn lawsuits from states and environmental groups, arguing the emergency is being misused.
In September, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the DOE had exceeded the law’s emergency powers by using Section 202(c) to keep open the JH Campbell coal plant in Michigan.
Origional Source: https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-16206339/power-grid-emergency-pjm-us.html
