State Energy Insights: March 2025

Grid Reliability and Regulatory Updates from ReliabilityFirst

Upcoming Events

March 17, 2-3:30 p.m. ET | Tech Talk with RF

Join us for our next Tech Talk on March 17, where we’ll have a presentation on large load forecasting by PJM and incident review and guidance on voltage-sensitive large load by speakers from NERC and SERC.

Event details

March 20, 10-11 a.m. ET | FERC Open Meeting

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will hold an open meeting on Thursday, March 20. There will be a webcast link available on the FERC website.

Event details

News & Updates

FERC, NARUC to host Federal-State Current Issues Collaborative Meeting

FERC and NARUC announced that they will hold their second meeting of the Federal-State Current Issues Collaborative on April 30, 2025 from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. ET at FERC Headquarters in Washington, D.C. There will also be a public webcast available on the FERC website. The group includes all five FERC Commissioners and 10 state commissioner representatives, nominated by NARUC and affirmed by FERC.

The purpose of the meetings is to provide a venue for federal and state regulators to share perspectives, increase understanding, and, where appropriate, identify potential solutions regarding challenges and coordination on a broad range of matters that impact specific state and federal regulatory jurisdiction.

Like the first meeting in 2024, the April meeting will focus on gas-electric coordination, and a more detailed agenda will be released closer to the meeting date.

FERC, NERC to host joint workshop on supply chain risk management

FERC and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) announced that on March 20 from 1 to 5 p.m. (ET), they will be holding a hybrid virtual/in-person workshop on supply chain risk management.

The workshop will focus on FERC’s proposed directive in its September 2024 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to require that entities establish steps in supply chain risk management plans to validate the completeness and accuracy of information received from vendors during the procurement process. The aim is to better inform the identification and assessment of supply chain risks associated with vendors’ software, hardware, or services. Additional information on how to attend the workshop and a detailed agenda will be released in the future on the FERC website.

GRID Power Act introduced in U.S. House of Representatives

Rep. Troy Balderson (R-Ohio) introduced the Guaranteeing Reliability through the Interconnection of Dispatchable (GRID) Power Act, a bill designed to improve interconnection queue flexibility and speed the connection of dispatchable generation.

The bill would require FERC to initiate a rulemaking to allow transmission providers to submit proposals (with detailed justification and prior public notice and comment) to FERC, to move up dispatchable power projects in the interconnection queue that would help ensure reliability and resource adequacy.

There has been much discussion across the industry about the need to bring on additional generation quickly given rapidly rising energy demand. A companion bill was also introduced in the Senate by Sens. John Hoeven (R-North Dakota) and Todd Young (R-Indiana).

NERC paper discusses growing dependence of electric grid on natural gas infrastructure

NERC released its second Reliability Insights document in March, exploring the interconnected relationship between the gas and electric systems. The series aims to inform stakeholders on topics related to reliability and security of the North American grid, identifying critical issues and potential reliability impacts.

In this paper, NERC details the growing dependence of the electric grid on natural gas infrastructure. This shift has created new operational and planning challenges, as seen during Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022 when extreme cold temperatures in the Eastern Interconnection caused both a spike in peak electricity demand as well as a major dip in natural gas production due to various mechanical and operational issues. The full document is available here.

NERC, E-ISAC 2024 year-in-review videos highlight organizations’ progress in energy, security, agility, outreach and sustainability

NERC has released two year-in-review videos – one for the ERO Enterprise and one specifically focusing on the E-ISAC. The ERO Enterprise 2024 Year-in-Review video highlights progress over the past year in five key areas: energy, security, agility, outreach, and sustainability.

The E-ISAC Year-in-Review video discusses the electricity security landscape and the E-ISAC’s role in reducing physical and cyber security risk to the North American grid in 2024. The video highlights how the E-ISAC worked with its more than 1,800 member and partner organizations to help strengthen the electric industry against an unprecedented range of cyber and physical security threats.