Possibly the most crucial challenge to ensuring delivery of reliable energy services to consumers this winter is successful communication and coordination between the natural gas and electric power industries.
That was the prevailing message from the 2024 FERC Winter Energy Market and Electric Reliability Assessment, presented to the Commission at its November 21, 2024, meeting. The Assessment finds that the share of natural gas-fired electricity generation in the U.S. has jumped significantly over the past 10 years – today it is 43 percent of a total of nearly 4.2 terawatt hours of utility scale generation, compared to 28 percent of nearly 4.1 TWh of utility scale generation in 2014.
The Assessment presentation came on the heels of the recent collaborative meeting between FERC and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), at which participants stressed the need to ensure the nation does not see repeats of 2021’s Winter Storm Uri and 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott.
“I want us to learn more from this report and make sure that it feeds back to our NARUC process going forward,” FERC Chairman Willie Phillips said at the November 21 Commission meeting.
According to the Assessment, the gas-electric coordination challenge is most acute on the East Coast, where natural gas plants in New England, New York, the PJM Interconnection and the Southeastern U.S. constitute 52 percent of the total 535 gigawatts of natural gas net with capacity expected to be operational by February 2025. And New England, New York and PJM are regions where winters are historically cold and gas supplies can be tight due to limited pipeline capacity and high gas demand for residential and commercial heating.
Cold winters and the electric system’s increasing dependence on natural gas have compelled the two industries to enhance coordination. The utility industry and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation have taken several initiatives. For instance, New England is in its second year of the inventoried energy program, a voluntary effort that compensates participants for keeping inventoried energy for their generating assets during extreme cold weather.
Meanwhile, gas pipelines and power grid operators have improved their communication and coordination efforts. And earlier this year, FERC approved two mandatory reliability standards requiring electric utilities to identify critical gas infrastructure in their load-shedding plans to ensure continued service to the gas facilities and that balancing authorities have a way to determine a proper reserve margin for extreme cold weather. The providers have 30 months to develop plans to comply with those standards.