NERC/FERC Caution New England, Central US May Experience Blackouts
Last week, two different quasi-governmental agencies, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), issued summer assessments for whether or not the country could experience problems with having enough electric power for this summer. Both assessments conclude the same thing: IF we don’t have any extreme weather events, and if unreliable renewable sources like solar and wind don’t crap out for an extended period, we’ll be fine. However, if we do have a hot spell or solar/wind fail, we’re in trouble. In particular, New England and the central part of the country from top to bottom are at most risk. However, even the PJM area could experience some problems. Read More “NERC/FERC Caution New England, Central US May Experience Blackouts”
We spotted a story that got us thinking. Pennsylvania is the #1 exporter of electricity in the country, exporting some 26% of all the electricity it produces. Such exports give the state an opportunity to profit from building more gas-fired power, leveraging cheap Marcellus gas. However, exporting electricity is a complex issue. PA State Senator Kristin Phillips-Hill, Republican from York, PA, is sounding the alarm over the electricity exporting issue. She makes some great points… 
In December, MDN told you that the country’s largest electric grid, PJM Interconnection, which covers all or parts of 13 states, including PA, OH, and WV, proposed changes to how it decides which new power plants can connect to the system first. The new policy *favors* adding natural gas-fired power over other types of power like unreliable solar and wind (see 
In March, MDN told you about a legislative proposal from newly elected West Virginia Governor Pat Morrisey, a measure called the Power Generation and Consumption Act (House Bill 2014) to expand data center development in the state (see 
Diversified Energy, with significant assets in the Marcellus/Utica region (and other regions too), owns approximately 8 million acres of leases with close to 70,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. The company’s business model is to buy lower-producing wells on the cheap and find ways to make them more productive. One of the new ways Diversified is looking to make money with old wells is by mining cryptocurrency at wells in remote locations not hooked to a pipeline network. In March 2023, MDN told you that Diversified would try crypto-mining at a well in Elk County, Pennsylvania (see 
Yesterday, the seven members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (five Democrats and two Republicans) heard oral arguments in a lawsuit that attempts to force PA to accept the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an obscene carbon tax on coal- and gas-fired power plants. Former Democrat Governor Tom Wolf tried to force the state to join RGGI in 2019 (see 
In January, MDN reported that the PJM Interconnection electrical grid operator, covering Pennsylvania (along with all or parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia), had caved to the political demands of PA Gov. Josh Shapiro to artificially cap the prices of the next capacity auction scheduled for July 2025 (see 
Houston, we have a problem. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the data centers (banks of hundreds or thousands of computers) that support AI are being planned right now. All those data centers need reliable power supplies. Unreliable solar and wind are not up to the task, so the companies building those data centers (like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and others) are turning to natural gas. Which we love! But here’s the problem: the turbines needed to generate the electricity (turbines that burn natural gas) are now on backorder… until 2028 or later. 
Speaking of gas turbines and our current inability to produce them quickly enough, we came across a somewhat related story from Reuters. The reporters from Reuters are sounding the alarm that U.S. LNG export facilities may soon have to compete for natural gas supplies with power plants needed to power AI data centers. The result is that the price of natural gas will increase, and in some cases, it may not be available for exports. Of course, the free market (capitalism) will sort this out on its own, but in the meantime, there may be some tension. 
In January, MDN brought you the news that TECfusions, based in Tampa, Florida, had purchased 1,395 acres in Upper Burrell (Westmoreland County), PA, for a groundbreaking data center project called TECfusions Keystone Connect (see 
A power project we’ve been tracking since 2017 is a 620-megawatt (MW) Marcellus-fired electric plant in Greene County, PA, called the Hill Top Energy Center (
In January, MDN reported that the PJM Interconnection electrical grid operator, covering Pennsylvania (along with all or parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia), had caved to the political demands of PA Gov. Josh Shapiro to artificially cap the prices of the next capacity auction scheduled for July 2025 (see