The U.S. Department of Energy issued a power grid emergency order on Sunday for 17 states, including Montana and Wyoming, giving the Southwest Power Pool authority to bring backup generators online ahead of extreme heat. Brandon Wittman of Yellowstone Valley Electric said the step should reduce the chances of a blackout.
The order affects a broad stretch of the central U.S. and comes as electricity demand is moving toward near-record levels. It also puts the region on the path toward a Level 3 Energy Emergency Alert if conditions worsen.
Southwest Power Pool and Montana
The Southwest Power Pool manages the grid across much of the central U.S., and parts of Montana are served by cooperatives like Yellowstone Valley Electric Cooperative. Wittman said the order gives utilities more room to act before the grid reaches a point where curtailments become necessary.
“A level three, is, you're getting to the point where you need to start considering curtailing,” Wittman said. He also said, “It's going to take something more than just heat to cause an outage or a rolling blackout.”
Billings industrial load
Wittman said large industrial users would likely be targeted first if load shedding is needed. “It's not like it rolls across this entire region. They identify certain areas that'll be most beneficial to start turning things off,” he said.
He pointed to the Billings area refineries as the kind of load that can be reduced first. “You think about some of the really big industrial loads, the Billings area refineries, that sort of thing. That's where shedding load really pays off,” Wittman said.
Phillips 66 declined to comment on what operations would look like during a potential rolling blackout.
Heat and recovery
Utility leaders said the length of the heat is a major challenge for the grid. Parts of Texas and Louisiana could see temperatures above 110 degrees, and Wittman said the strain comes from heat that does not give the system time to recover overnight.
“It's not just the one day of extreme heat. It's the extended period that really makes a difference where things just don't have the opportunity to cool down overnight and recover,” he said. If grid stress deepens, the next step could be a Level 3 Energy Emergency Alert with targeted curtailments before broader outages.
