DOE plays out worst-case scenarios for US grid

E&E News

5 hours ago

A Department of Energy report issued Monday warns that the United States will lose the race for leadership in artificial intelligence technology unless it slams the brakes on plans to close older coal- and gas-fired power plants and speeds up construction of new ones.
To dramatize the challenge, DOE said that parts of the mid-Atlantic and Great Plains regions could face 400 hours of power outages in 2030 in a worst-case scenario where tech companies build giant energy-hungry AI data centers unabated, old coal plants keep closing and new power supplies come online slowly.
Hardest hit under this scenario, according to the DOE analysis, would be eastern states served by the PJM Interconnection grid. Weeks of power shortages in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia by 2030 would result from power plant closures and data center expansion. Under the most severe weather conditions based on history (not including future climate forecasts), power shortages in the area could total more than a month over the course of a year.
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While the DOE scenarios are startling, the department noted that U.S. grid operators responsible for keeping the lights on would not approve data center growth that would 'jeopardize the reliability of the system.'
Still, the DOE analysis sets the stage for emergency actions President Donald Trump has promised. That includes ordering coal- and gas-fired generators to cancel planned closures and to keep running. A nearly 90-year-old provision of the Federal Power Act, written for wartime use, gives him broad leeway to keep the plants open during national emergencies.
The DOE report declares Trump's vow to win the AI race against China is such an emergency.
'Absent intervention, it is impossible for the nation's bulk power system to meet the AI growth requirements while maintaining a reliable power grid and keeping energy costs low for our citizens,' said the report.
Presented as a technical analysis, the DOE report adopts Trump's rebuke of former President Joe Biden's goal of closing down coal power plants in favor of carbon-free wind and solar generation, which Trump recently called 'windmills and the rest of this JUNK.'
'Caused by the harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration, our Nation's inadequate energy supply and infrastructure causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed-incomes,' the report said.
Advanced Energy United, a group of clean technology developers and energy users, took issue with sweeping assertions that wind, solar and battery technology are a net-negative for the grid as opposed to energy assets during a period of rising electricity demand:
'The study released today by the Department of Energy appears to exaggerate the risk of blackouts and undervalue the contributions of entire resource classes, like wind, solar, and battery storage, despite the fact that regions like Texas that have enabled rapid growth of these technologies have been rewarded with lower costs and a more reliable grid,' said Caitlin Marquis, managing director at Advanced Energy United.
'[It's] troubling that this final agency action will not be subject to public scrutiny before it's used to justify retaining power plants that aren't needed for reliability — a decision that would directly add costs to consumers bills,' Marquis added.
Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, questioned whether the analysis supports emergency declarations from the administration ordering aging coal and gas plants to halt their retirement plans.
'Reforms may be needed to ensure better planning for future resource adequacy to power AI,' Danis said in a statement, 'but they should focus on improving existing markets and planning standards, as well as speeding up new resource interconnection, rather than forcing customers to pay to keep old, inefficient plants online.'
Biden's energy agenda — an unprecedented campaign to combat the threat of climate change fueled by the burning of coal, natural gas and oil for electricity — was only partially realized when Trump's victory last November signed death warrants for much of the plan. The DOE report does not mention climate change.
'AI is going to change our world'
A consensus of grid operators in U.S. competitive power markets like PJM and the Southwest Power Pool is that grid reliability faces extraordinary stresses if the heavy rate of fossil plant retirements continues. Coal-fired plants, which supplied half of U.S. electricity two decades ago, have shrunk to just a 16 percent share, trailing natural gas plants, nuclear reactors, and just ahead of wind and solar power.
The conclusion of power industry leaders at a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission conference last month was 'keep what we have' until the dimensions of the AI boom are clear and the pace of new plant construction can finally pick up.
'AI is going to change our world,' said Manu Asthana, the PJM CEO, told the FERC conference. 'In our forecast between 2024 and 2030, currently we have a 32-gigawatt increase in demand, of which 30 is from data centers,' Asthana said. PJM must 'find that intersection between reliability and affordability that works both for consumers and suppliers, and that intersection is getting harder and harder to find.'
Clean energy advocates fault PJM for an overly costly, complex process for approving new solar and wind projects in the region over nearly a decade.
'As if this wasn't challenging enough,' said Lanny Nickell, CEO of the Southwest Power Pool, 'we are now projecting our peak demand to be as much as 75 percent higher 10 years from now, and that's largely driven by electrification and data center growth.'
DOE reported that 104 GW of fossil fuel plant capacity is expected to retire by 2030. (One GW of power output—1,000 megawatts—supports about 850,000 average U.S. homes, with wide regional differences.)
'This capacity is not being replaced on a one-to-one basis and losing this generation could lead to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation,' DOE said.
The supply-demand balance gets much worse with DOE's assumption that at least 50 GW of new around-the-clock plant capacity will be needed to power data centers between now and 2030.
The DOE report looks backward at historical weather patterns. That runs contrary to the warnings of grid officials at last month's FERC conference, urging regulators and the power industry to look ahead to worsening assaults of extreme weather fueled by climate change.
While these scenarios underscore the need for harder, weather-protected energy infrastructure, they highlight the power system's dependence on just-in-time natural gas supply that can also be threatened in severe winters, officials said.
Jim Robb, CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the high-voltage grid's security monitor, told last month's conference that weather models need improvements. 'We also need to have a much better understanding of natural gas, particularly in winter.'