{"id":446849,"date":"2026-02-03T16:37:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T16:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/446849\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T16:37:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T16:37:26","slug":"what-winter-storm-fern-revealed-about-the-grid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/446849\/","title":{"rendered":"What Winter Storm Fern revealed about the grid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2021, Winter Storm Uri resulted in more than 240 deaths in Texas as freezing temperatures shut down gas power plants<\/a> and pushed the state\u2019s independent electricity grid to the brink of collapse.<\/p>\n

It was an example of a\u00a0worst-case wintertime scenario for the power sector \u2014 and of how fossil fuel resources, often touted for their reliability, can falter when they\u2019re needed most.<\/p>\n

So when the massive Winter Storm Fern was bearing down on more than half of the U.S. last week, including Texas and much of the Southeast, onlookers braced for a\u00a0repeat. And while the grid was indeed pushed to its limit, it weathered the\u00a0storm.<\/p>\n

In Texas, efforts to winterize power plants following Uri paid off, and the state avoided forced shutoffs this time around. Texas also has added a\u00a0tremendous amount<\/a> of wind, solar, and battery storage over the past few years, helping its grid keep pace amid the blistering cold. It\u2019s true that Fern wasn\u2019t as intense of a\u00a0storm as Uri, but University of Texas energy professor Michael Webber told KXAN<\/a> that the current grid likely would\u2019ve avoided much of 2021\u2019s devastation.<\/p>\n

In New England, which was hammered with snow and intense cold, the power grid was stable but dirtier than usual: It had to rely heavily on oil<\/a>, a\u00a0reserve fuel that is especially polluting.<\/p>\n

One big reason<\/a>? Canadian hydropower, usually a\u00a0key source, was hard to come by as that nation dealt with its own cold spell, and gas was in short supply, too, as New England homes burned more of it for heating. For what it\u2019s worth, Vineyard Wind \u2014 the nearly complete offshore wind farm that just this week defeated a\u00a0Trump administration stop-work order \u2014 provided a\u00a0notable boost<\/a> to the grid even in its partially finished state.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t all good news. More than one million people<\/a> lost power during the storm, particularly in the Southeast, and thousands are still in the dark<\/a> as of this morning. Power plant shutoffs aren\u2019t to blame, but rather challenges with the grid<\/a> itself are, including toppled utility poles, iced-over substations, and downed transmission lines.<\/p>\n

PJM Interconnection \u2014 the nation\u2019s largest grid operator, which spans the mid-Atlantic \u2014 suffered the most intense impact. Data analyzed by think tank Energy Innovation<\/a> suggests that frozen pipelines and other infrastructure curbed fossil-fueled power plants\u2019 output by tens of gigawatts in the region.<\/p>\n

This reduced power generation luckily didn\u2019t force PJM to institute rolling blackouts. But it did, as Energy Innovation put it, underscore a\u00a0clear point: It\u2019s not viable to rely on fossil fuels alone to get through intense winter weather \u2014 and the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to block solar and wind while propping up fossil fuels could prove dangerous if taken to their extreme.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More big energy stories<\/p>\n

Outside the U.S., offshore wind sails\u00a0ahead<\/p>\n

As the Trump administration turns its back on offshore wind, the rest of the world is going full speed ahead. Ten European countries formed a\u00a0coalition this week to build out 100\u00a0GW of offshore wind power, Alexander C. Kaufman reports<\/a>. It\u2019s all part of an effort to turn the North Sea into\u200b\u201cthe world\u2019s largest clean energy reservoir,\u201d German Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

The announcement follows China\u2019s insistence last week that it will continue to build<\/a> its offshore wind dominance, even after a\u00a0dig<\/a> from\u00a0Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 2021, Winter Storm Uri resulted in more than 240 deaths in Texas as freezing temperatures shut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-446849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}