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Is the grid going to have blackouts this winter or summer?

Updated

General information, not a substitute for the advice of an attorney.

Short answer: Under normal weather, no region is expected to run short. Under extreme weather, NERC's 2025-2026 Winter Reliability Assessment says seven areas face possible shortfalls: NPCC-Maritimes, NPCC-New England, SERC-East, SERC-Central, Texas RE-ERCOT, WECC-Basin, and WECC-Northwest (NERC WRA, November 2025). "Elevated risk" describes probabilities in rare conditions, not a forecast of outages, and routine interruptions have held at about two hours per customer per year (EIA).

What the risk labels mean

  • High risk: planning reserve margins do not meet the reference margin level; resources may fall short even under normal peak-day conditions. The clearest winter case is the Maritimes, whose 16.9% margin is 270 MW below its 20% reference (NERC WRA).
  • Elevated risk: probabilistic indices are low but not negligible (for example, more than 0.1 expected hours of lost load over the season); resources may fall short under extreme demand or reduced supply (NERC WRA).
  • Normal risk: indices negligible; reserves sufficient under normal and extreme peak-day scenarios (NERC WRA).

This winter

Aggregate winter peak demand is up 20 GW (2.5%) from last winter. Resources at winter peak grew by 9,447 MW, mostly demand response (8,112 MW) rather than generation (1,335 MW). NERC's main fuel concern is natural gas in extreme cold: output drops, plants without firm delivery may not get fuel, and freeze protection remains voluntary for the gas industry in most of North America (NERC WRA).

ERCOT's anticipated reserve margin of 36% is far above its 13.75% reference, yet NERC still expects reserve-shortage risk in peak and high-net-load hours. ERCOT's model gives a 2% chance of an energy emergency on the January peak day and a 1.8% chance of controlled load shed, with data centers and other large loads the main growth driver (NERC WRA).

The longer view

NERC's 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment rated no area high risk and eleven elevated, including ERCOT (risk year 2026), PJM, MISO, SPP, New England, and SERC-East, and projected summer peak up 15% (132 GW) and winter peak up almost 18% (149 GW) over ten years, with 115 GW of announced retirements (NERC 2024 LTRA). The 2025 edition says summer peak growth almost doubled the prior projection, with approved and in-process resource additions rising from 55 GW in 2022 to 224 GW in 2025 (NERC 2025 LTRA summary).

What is genuinely unsettled

Whether resources counted on paper, especially demand response and gas plants without firm fuel, perform in a multi-day cold snap; how fast large loads actually arrive; and how to weigh a 1.8% load-shed probability. The other anchor is the record: in 2024, hurricanes, not supply shortfalls, caused 80% of the hours Americans spent without power (EIA).

See outage history by county and ZIP, what ERCOT is, the ERCOT queue, and data centers and land.

General information from the sources linked above, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

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