Three power plants malfunctioned. Freezing temperatures hampered the output of several nuclear facilities. Energy demand forecasts failed. Nearby utilities in other states, struggling to keep their own customers warm, had no power to sell. On Christmas Eve, a multiverse of mishaps prompted Duke Energy for the first time in state history to inflict rolling blackouts on an estimated 300,000 North Carolinians.
...Recent North Carolina attack helps spur new national effort Less than two weeks after gunfire damaged two Duke Energy substations in Moore County, knocking out power to about 45,000 people, federal regulators ordered a review of security standards at electric transmission facilities and control centers. Last Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC),...
...Advocates say the nation needs a coherent, cohesive and transparent electric system, but utility companies resist added oversight An aging electric grid, fossil fuel power plant retirements and a massive renewable electricity buildout are all contributing to a boom in transmission and distribution wire projects by electric utilities across the country.
...President Joe Biden’s administration laid out ambitious additional goals last month to boost offshore wind power generation, one of the American renewable energy industry’s emerging wide open frontiers. The federal announcements come as coastal states across the country are increasingly setting offshore wind energy targets, seeking to capture not just clean energy but the potentially big economic benefits of their ports serving as hubs for the vessels, blade manufacturing, cables and other infrastructure needed to get turbines more than 850 feet tall installed miles out at sea.
...For the better part of the past century, the American electric power system evolved around large, mostly fossil fuel power plants delivering electricity to residences, businesses and industry through a network of transmission and distribution wires that collectively came to be called the electric grid. But as the threat of climate change driven by carbon pollution becomes more dire and as technological advances make wind, solar and battery storage ever cheaper options for powering homes and business, states, corporations and voters are increasingly pushing to aggressively decarbonize the grid.
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