Why Keeping The Lights On Is Getting Harder

**John Moura** (0:00)
We're excelling in many ways, keeping the system reliable. But what looms out in front of us are as tremendous challenges, but also opportunities.

**Kinsey Grant Baker** (0:07)
This shift in the generation mix, more toward wind-solar batteries, when we're looking at enough supply to meet the demand, how does the generation mix factor into that equation?

**John Moura** (0:18)
The risk factors are less about the mechanical failures and more about, well, what's the likelihood the wind will go down? What's the likelihood the sun will be cloudy?

**Kinsey Grant Baker** (0:28)
The data centers have the capacity to also amplify reliability.

**John Moura** (0:32)
There's opportunity within its controllability to provide flexibility into the grid. Reliability really shouldn't be a real-time observation activity, really is something that we ought to be planning in advance. Then we can work on the affordability and security piece as well.

**Kinsey Grant Baker** (0:54)
I'm Kinsey Grant Baker and welcome back to Power Perspectives. Three words every utility pro hears in their dreams, affordability, resilience, and reliability. Of that three-legged stool, the last one, reliability, is perhaps the most crucial.
It's reliability that ensures the lights go on when we flip the switch, that keeps critical infrastructure like hospitals and airports and World Cup stadiums functioning safely without disruption, that make sure all of this rampant demand has supply to back it up. Now, the US electric grid is by all accounts highly functional. It works well most of the time, but reliability is trending in a strange direction, with electrification and manufacturing and data centers and the rest of the demand spiking laundry list that you know all too well. The truth is, Americans experience more outages now than they did a decade ago, with the average annual outage time exceeding 360 minutes. Still pretty great. 360 minutes is only about as long as it takes to watch The Matrix two and a half times, but that does mean that our grid is at times less reliable than that of other developed countries.
So what are leaders doing to ensure that the trend heads back up? Because the grid gets more and more complex, that means our reliability needs are only increasing. Today we have an energy pro whose job is squarely in that all-important niche. John Moura is Director of Reliability Assessment and System Analysis at NERC. His job? Figure out how reliable the North American bulk power system really is. And today John is here to tell us what he's found, what it means, and where we're headed. John, welcome to Power Perspectives. How are you today?

**John Moura** (2:27)
Hi Kinsey, thank you for having me on.

**Kinsey Grant Baker** (2:29)
Of course, I'm thrilled to have you. We're going to have a great conversation today. This is a topic that a lot of our listeners care very deeply about, as I'm sure you're not surprised to hear. But I want to start by really setting the scene and getting an understanding of that where we are, as I mentioned in the introduction. So if you don't mind, could you sum up the state of the power grid reliability in North America in maybe one sentence? I would challenge you to one sentence. Tell me what's going on right now with reliability.

**John Moura** (2:55)
Yeah, I think you opened up really great in the premises right on track. Our whole grid has evolved so much in the past couple of decades. We're using electricity in so many different ways than we have in the past.
We're excelling in many ways keeping the system reliable. But what looms out in front of us are some tremendous challenges, but also opportunities. New datacenter growth can really amplify the grid's reliability, not challenge it if we plan it correctly. So I'm excited about the future and excited about talking a little bit more about the challenges we have in front of us.

**Kinsey Grant Baker** (3:32)
That's a great way to put it, that these challenges and opportunities can really coexist in one specific example like datacenters, but I'm sure across the board too. If you had to give a grade to grid reliability these days, what would you give us here? What would you score us in the US in terms of reliability right now?

**John Moura** (3:49)
Yeah, it's a tough one. Different parts of the country are at, I would say, different risk levels. We don't have traditional grades in our assessments, but when we do look at reliability and try to communicate those risks, there's not really any one metric that tells it all. Reliability is a pretty complicated thing to comprehend. You can think about it around how much capacity areas have, or you can think about it around how stable certain areas are, making sure they have enough transmission.