Blackout crisis looms as Americans may face full month of outages

Daily Mail​

7 hours ago

Millions of Americans may soon face nearly a full month of power blackouts each year, disrupting daily life, businesses, and critical services across the country. White House officials warned on Monday that the retiring power plants and soaring electricity demand could push the US grid to its limits, triggering over 800 hours of power outages annually. From hospitals to data centers, the ripple effects of extended blackouts could impact nearly every part of daily life for US residents.
Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright said: 'In the coming years, America's re-industrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power. ' President Trump's administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure.' Meanwhile, critics argue the DOE report leans heavily into political messaging and fails to fully acknowledge progress being made in clean energy and battery storage. Caitlin Marquis of Advanced Energy United said:'It underestimates advances in battery storage and renewable integration.'
'Regions like Texas have shown that solar and wind, paired with batteries, can improve reliability while lowering costs,' she said. The DOE's latest findings appear to pave the way for extending the life of aging coal and gas plants well beyond their originally planned shutdowns. Trump is moving to reverse many of former President Joe Biden's clean energy initiatives, including relaxing emissions limits on coal and expanding federal drilling leases for oil and gas. The president has also rolled back several environmental protections aimed at curbing fossil fuel dependency.
'The US cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued,' said Wright. Among the most dramatic claims, the DOE estimates that continued power plant retirements could trigger a 100-fold increase in blackout hours over the next five years. Even if no additional plants shut down, some areas of the country could still see a 34-fold spike in outages due to rising demand.
John Moura, director at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), warned: 'We're seeing demand growth like we haven't seen in decades, and our infrastructure is not being built fast enough to keep up.' Much of that demand is being fueled by the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence. Data centers already consume about four percent of the nation's electricity, and that could more than double by 2030. That growth adds enormous pressure on the grid. DOE officials say meeting that demand will require substantial investment in stable, 24/7 power sources.
Manu Asthana, CEO of PJM, said: 'AI is going to change our world... But balancing reliability and affordability is getting harder.' According to the Energy Department (DOE), the grid is expected to add 209 gigawatts of new power capacity by 2030, enough to meet most of the country's needs. To put that into perspective, 209 gigawatts could power roughly 150 million homes. However, only 22 gigawatts of that will come from around-the-clock sources like coal, gas, or nuclear energy. That's barely enough to replace the 104 gigawatts of firm, base-load generation scheduled to retire over the same period.
Grid operators are increasingly worried that if coal and gas plants continue to retire without adequate replacements, the grid could become dangerously unstable. Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of America's Power, said: 'Coal plants store weeks of fuel on site and can run around the clock, providing the reliability attributes regulators consistently say they need.' 'Yet these plants are disappearing faster than reliable replacements are being built,' she added.
The DOE report also criticizes how grid reliability is currently assessed. It argues that traditional methods, which focus only on peak demand, are outdated. According to the report, those old models do not fully account for how outages can spread across interconnected regions or the scale and duration of blackouts. 'Modern methods must move beyond peak load periods and incorporate outage magnitude and duration to properly safeguard reliability,' said Secretary Wright.
This call for updated risk modeling represents a major shift in how regulators may be asked to evaluate grid health moving forward. To deal with the growing threat, the DOE has already invoked emergency powers to delay the shutdown of key coal and gas plants. One such case is the J H Campbell coal plant in Michigan, which will now remain online through the summer heat.
The Trump administration is also moving quickly to restart shuttered nuclear plants, including the controversial Three Mile Island facility, as part of its strategy to boost stable energy supply. 'We've got a lot of work to do to slow down retirements and speed up new capacity additions,' said John Bear, CEO of Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO). At the same time, recent federal legislation has rolled back clean energy tax credits, signaling a broader policy shift back toward fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
One of the most glaring examples of grid failure occurred in February 2021, when a historic winter storm hit Texas and left more than four million people without power . The blackout, which lasted for days in some areas, exposed major flaws in the state's energy infrastructure and resulted in hundreds of deaths. New York has also faced serious energy challenges. In July 2019, a major blackout hit Manhattan, leaving over 70,000 customers without power for hours. The outage disrupted subway service, knocked out traffic lights, and left parts of Times Square in darkness.