Almost two years after Winter Storm Elliott forced the largest recorded manual load shed in the history of the Eastern interconnection, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Friday it “remains concerned about maintaining sufficient natural gas supplies to address extreme winter conditions.”
NERC’s statement on the “criticality of natural gas supply this winter” follows other warnings the reliability watchdog has issued regarding the need for greater coordination between the gas and electric sectors. Grid operators and gas producers this week said they are heeding those warnings and are working to weatherize their systems and improve market mechanisms to keep energy flowing.
Temperatures were up to 30 degrees below normal during the December 2022 storm, driving electricity demand higher and causing grid operators to declare emergency operations. Unplanned outages reached 90,500 MW, and transmission operators in the Southeast ordered firm load shedding that exceeded 5,400 MW, NERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and grid operators concluded in a joint assessment of the event published a year ago.
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