Power grid emergency declared for 13 states, including NJ

Yeah, we got a whole education in the power system today, Steve and Natasha. But when people hear power grid emergency, it probably brings back memories of that massive blackout of 2003. And that's really scary. So today I talked to energy experts and they actually told me that the headlines are far more alarming than the threat of actually losing power. Let me explain what they told me. So what they said was a historic blackout left some 50 million people without power across the Northeast and Canada. But they say what's happening today is very different. The Department of Energy has issued an emergency order giving PJM, the regional power grid operator, access to additional electricity resources. And here is why. Days like today, unseasonably warm October weather driving up demand at the same time that power plants and transmission lines are offline for routine fall maintenance. That means there's less backup capacity available if something does go wrong. But the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities says the word emergency is part of the federal order process, and it doesn't actually mean that blackouts are imminent. In the immediate term, what this does is help ensure that PJM has access to the full resources necessary to make sure people don't experience brownouts or blackouts. right um so this sort of emergency order at the DOE issues it happens uh you know a handful of times every year basically during times of extreme weather events or a grid stress so you might be wondering well what does this mean for me well we're going to tell you local utilities are not asking the general public to cut back on electricity use and there doesn't seem to be any indication that residents need to change anything about their daily routines but there is a bigger concern here and that says artificial intelligence and data centers drive up electricity demand experts say the grid will need more power generation and transmission capability to keep up and that's exactly where this short-term emergency raises some longer-term questions this has been putting stress on the operations and institutions handling the grid from the physics perspective meaning the actual delivery of electricity um it's hard to say but but planning is moving forward it's clear that we need to adapt the grid to this kind of changes in load requirements all right so the brass tacks here is that this is not the crisis of 2003 in fact the emergency measures are supposed to prevent something like that from happening again But when I talk to the Board of Public Utilities, Steve and Natasha, they say that these actions are becoming more frequent. That is because of the stress on the grid. And so while they're not asking anybody in New Jersey or the other 12 states that are a part of this to curtail any of their activity, they may have to in the future if things don't change on the regional power side. That's the latest from Montclair tonight.