By Conor Bernstein
By Conor Bernstein
Across the country, one grid operator after another is sounding the alarm over soaring power demand, an inability to meet it and the threat posed by early retirements of essential coal capacity. PJM Interconnection, the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and now the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) have all plainly and forcefully warned they are going to be short of power in the years ahead.
Surging power demand from electrification, the explosive growth of data centers and the reshoring of heavy industry has upended the power demand picture nearly overnight. This rapidly emerging demand is colliding with both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) blitz of rules designed to all but immediately close the coal fleet, and a startling inability to bring new generation and enabling energy infrastructure online at scale.
In June, MISO said that if its members don’t delay retirements of power plants or bring more resources online faster and at larger numbers than they have historically, a potential 2.7-gigawatt deficit next year could soar to 14 GW in 2029. A deficit of that size is equivalent to being short the power needed for 10 million homes.
“The number of gigawatts coming online is insufficient for what we’re seeing coming,” MISO CEO John Bear said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to slow down the retirements and speed up the additions coming onto the system.”
MISO has 50 GW of new generating capacity, mostly intermittent renewables, across 316 projects that have been approved for connection but are experiencing delays in construction. This missing capacity is an enormous problem. But even if this capacity can be added — a huge if — Bear has warned it doesn’t offer the same reliability attributes of what is being lost with baseload generation continuing to fall off the system.
MISO now expects anywhere from 12 GW to 14 GW of demand growth in coming years from data centers alone. MISO Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Todd Hillman said, “that would be like adding 11 million homes. And these have much higher capacity factors than homes. That’s just a gigantic addition to a grid that’s already stressed.” He added that “poor visibility into the magnitude and timing of large load additions is putting at risk our ability to reliably accommodate them.”
So rapid and so large is this growth, coupled with electrification and resurgent industrial investment, MISO is now warning it needs to change its modelling for future demand. In other words, the approach MISO is currently using based on historical experiences simply isn’t up to the task at hand.
As MISO, PJM and SPP have made abundantly clear, the challenges and shortfalls they’re facing aren’t theoretical — they’re here. They need every tool they can get their hands on to maintain reliability and meet surging new demand. The tools they seem to need most are the essential baseload power plants they have today that EPA is determined won’t be there tomorrow.
Conor Bernstein is a spokesperson for the National Mining Association, the industry’s trade group based in Washington, D.C.
