What is a catastrophic power outage?• Events beyond modern experience that exhaust or exceed mutual aid capabilities
• Likely to be no-notice or limited-notice events that could be complicated by a cyber-physical attack
• Long duration, lasting several weeks to months due to physical infrastructure damage
• Affects a broad geographic area, covering multiple states or regions and affecting tens of millions of people
• Causes severe cascading impacts that force critical sectors—drinking water and wastewater systems, communications, transportation, healthcare, and financial services—to operate in a degraded state
(Excerpt From Dec 2018 NIAC Report)
#19,328
Eight years ago, in NIAC: Surviving A Catastrophic Power Outage, we looked at a presidential commission's report on the risks of a major, prolonged, grid collapse.
While previously the biggest threats to the grid were thought to be natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, ice storms, severe space weather, etc.), `bad actors' (cyber-threats, sabotage, etc.), or aging infrastructure (see ASCE report card on America’s infrastructure), the recent and rapidly increasing power demands from A.I. data centers and bitcoin mining operations have added yet another potential point of failure.This 92-page report was released a little more than a year after hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico suffered the longest (11-month) grid failure in American History and a year following another report - DHS: NIAC Cyber Threat Report - August 2017 - that warned of growing cyber threats to our critical infrastructure and called for `bold, decisive actions'.
Last summer the U.S. Department of Energy published a 73-page report that warned that if current schedules for retirement of reliable power generation (especially baseload) continue, without enough firm replacement, the risk of blackouts by 2030 could increase dramatically.
Number one on their Key Takeaways was:
Status Quo is Unsustainable. The status quo of more generation retirements and less dependable replacement generation is neither consistent with winning the AI race and ensuring affordable energy for all Americans, nor with continued grid reliability (ensuring “resource adequacy”).
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.
We've been following their reliability reports and mitigation efforts for many years, but last February we looked at an a 181-page NERC Long-Term Reliability Report which warned that our power grid is facing a growing risk of electrical shortfalls over the next decade.
For those wanting a brief summary, NERC published the following press release (see Resource Adequacy Risks Intensify Across North America as Demand Growth Surges).
January 29, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. – NERC’s 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA) and infographic spotlight intensifying resource adequacy risks throughout the North American bulk power system (BPS) over the next 10 years. Summer peak demand is forecast to grow by 224 GW, a more than 69% increase over the 2024 LTRA forecast with new data centers for artificial intelligence and the digital economy accounting for most of the projected increase.
Winter demand growth continues to outpace summer demand growth with 246 GW of growth forecast over the next 10 years, reflecting the evolution of electricity usage. Uncertainty and lag in the pace of new resource additions are driving heightened concerns that industry will not be able to keep up with rapidly increasing demand.
(Continue . . . )
Four months ago, in NERC Issues Level 3 Alert As Grid Faces `Unprecedented Challenges' Due to Surge In Large Power Consumers we looked at a new threat; that the power draw from these massive computing centers can be erratic, with sudden drop offs and surges, that can destabilize the grid.
NERC, Regional Entities, and NERC registered entities have analyzed a series of disturbances that occurred on the bulk power system (BPS) resulting in widespread and unexpected customer-initiated load reduction of large loads. These disturbances involved multiple events during which 1,000+ MW of unexpected Large Loads output reduction occurred, with most events occurring in 2024 or 2025. The increase of Large Loads-related events coincides with an increase in Large Load penetration across the BPS.Since then, it has become apparent that:
- the risks are increasing
- real-world events are already occurring,
- and industry response to the earlier alert has been insufficient
While we've seen similar warnings for more than a year, this week NERC released a 3-page report which described several recent incidents where abrupt power demand drops temporarily affected the grid.
(Excerpt)
One risk detailed by the LLWG and enumerated in two NERC incident reviews (1, 2) is the voltage sensitivity of computational loads. There have been several incidents involving computational loads that have been shown to impact BPS operations when the loads remove themselves from the system during system disturbances. Several voltage-sensitive customer-initiated load reductions have occurred in the Eastern Interconnection and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) over the past two years.
The incidents largely unfold in a familiar pattern:
- The grid experiences a normally cleared fault, and voltage dips occur as part of normal reclosing to isolate the fault.
- After several reclosing attempts, computational load entities react to the voltage dips by transferring their load to their backup power systems, removing themselves from the grid, with the goal of protecting their equipment from outages and any potential damage resulting from prolonged voltage dips
- As a result, large amounts of demand suddenly disappear from the BPS, creating oscillations on the systems as generation rebalances frequency and voltage to meet the remaining demand.
Historically, the electric grid has not experienced, nor planned or operated for, these significant amounts of simultaneous load losses in response to a fault on the system. Rather, planners and operators have traditionally focused on the risk of large generation losses (and generators must meet certain Reliability Standards associated with “riding through” these types of faults).
While these recent load reduction incidents did not create any near- or long-term issues for the system, future incidents could result in severe impacts given the expansion in the number and size of computational load sites, especially when their deployment is geographically concentrated (such as in “Data Center Alley” in Virginia).
Additionally, since all computational loads on a circuit could see the same disturbance and take the same action, this creates significant common-mode failure risk.
(Continue . . . )
While none of these reported incidents have seriously threatened the grid, and the tone of this report is cautiously optimistic that the risks going forward are manageable; it stresses that:
The North American BPS has reached a historic juncture defined by the rapid change in the nature and volume of electricity demand. Recent customer-initiated load reduction events underscore the potential significant risks that large computational loads may present to BPS reliability. Fortunately, mitigation options are available, and computational load stakeholders have taken proactive steps to work with NERC, the Regional Entities, and grid operators.
While work is being done to reduce these risks, data centers aren't the only threat to the grid. As a Floridian who has gone through more than a few extended power outages - sometimes lasting a week or more - I've learned to put my faith more in preparedness rather than reassurances.
While I can't tell you what disruptions will come, or when they might occur, I firmly believe that being prepared - in advance - is the best insurance you and your family can have in an increasingly uncertain world.Which is why I've got 60 gals of water stockpiled, a full pantry, and a basic solar power setup (see Emergency Solar Power: Revisited); enough to provide lights, fans, and to keep my phone charged.
