Is Midwestern heat straining the power grid? Why transmission group issued warning

The Midwest’s regional electricity grid issued an energy emergency alert for several hours Monday afternoon amid triple-digit temperatures in parts of the region, including in the Kansas City area.

The Southwest Power Pool’s alert was triggered by a narrowing margin between the grid’s electricity supply and customers’ electricity demand as temperatures rose Monday afternoon.

“The alert that we issued yesterday is not that common, but it’s not unheard of,” said Derek Wingfield, a power pool spokesperson. “There have been three times in the last five years that we have issued an energy emergency alert: in 2019, 2021 and 2022.”

While the power supply remained sufficient Monday, the alert warned power plants not to go offline for maintenance and sought electricity from outside the Midwest to purchase onto the grid if necessary. And Wingfield says these alerts have become more common in recent years as extreme weather drives up the demand for electricity.

Here’s what to know about the alert and how the Southwest Power Pool keeps up with electricity demands during severe weather.

What caused the emergency energy alert?

You may never have heard of the Southwest Power Pool, but you feel its impact every time you turn on the lights at home. This regional agency oversees power generation and transmission across the middle of the country, from the Canadian border in North Dakota and eastern Montana all the way down to the Texas Panhandle. The grid’s massive coverage area serves around 18 million people, including the western side of Missouri and all of Kansas.

Just because you pay your electric bill to Evergy, doesn’t necessarily mean your electricity is coming from an Evergy power plant. Instead, electricity is shared (or “pooled”) throughout this regional grid.

This system helps local utility companies get the lowest prices possible and ensure that power plants are able to take turns shutting off for repairs when necessary without leaving customers in the dark.

The power pool essentially operates a wholesale electricity market: It’s in charge of buying enough electricity to meet the Midwest’s power demands, as well as some extra to create an electricity reserve, at the lowest prices possible.

The cheapest form of energy is almost always wind power, Wingfield told The Star. But this form of power is also what those in the industry call “variable,” meaning generators don’t get to decide when to turn it on or off. Instead, the grid must adapt quickly to the amount of wind that’s blowing — and have other energy sources like coal or natural gas plants ready to go on low-wind days.

That’s basically what happened Monday: Wind in turbine-heavy areas like Kansas died down in the early afternoon, just as the demand for electricity was increasing throughout the Midwest.

The Southwest Power Pool brought other electricity sources into the mix to meet that demand, but for a few hours the grid was using its full capacity to both provide electricity and keep a power reserve ready to deploy. This is what triggered the alert, which lasted from around 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Is the Midwest still under an energy emergency alert?

No — the energy emergency alert ended Monday afternoon after roughly two hours. However, the region is still under a Conservative Operations Advisory until 8 p.m. Tuesday, Wingfield said. Here’s what the different designations mean for electric companies around the Midwest.

Advisories are notifications of the Southwest Power Pool’s forecast of upcoming electricity supply conditions. They don’t generally affect individual customers, and are less serious than alerts. There are three main types:

• Weather Advisories alert utilities about incoming severe weather like heat, cold and storms that could affect electricity generation and customer demand.

• Resource Advisories alert utilities about changes in the availability of fuels like coal and natural gas.

• Conservative Operations Advisories are the most serious of the three. They advise additional power generators like coal plants and wind farms to be up and running, ready to sell their electricity onto the regional grid if demand increases. This is the type of advisory active until 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Alerts are more serious warnings to utility companies and power generators that the gap between electricity supply and electricity demand is shrinking. There are three levels of alerts that can get activated during these conditions:

• Alert Level 1 is what the region saw Monday. At this level, the power pool can meet its electricity demand and keep up its power reserves, but it doesn’t have any leeway to buy more power beyond that. The organization tells power generators not to go offline for maintenance and begins looking for electricity to buy from other regional grids if demand increases. The power pool also has the option to ask utilities to reduce their usage, but it doesn’t have to.

• Alert Level 2 is more severe. At this level, the demand for electricity is nearing the supply, causing the power pool to take measures to maintain its energy reserves. The organization is required to tell utilities to conserve energy by asking customers to reduce their electricity use — although it’s up to customers whether they choose to do so. The power pool may also start finding energy consumers like industrial plants that will volunteer to turn off temporarily to protect the grid’s energy surplus.

• Alert Level 3 is the most severe. At this level, the grid has to actively dip into its surplus electricity supply and import power from other regional grids in order to keep the lights on across the Midwest. Customers may see power outages, and utilities may have to identify critical infrastructure like hospitals to prioritize if there isn’t enough power to go around. The only time the Southwest Power Pool has ever reached this alert level was during Winter Storm Uri in early 2021.

What can electricity customers do to reduce strain on the power grid?

In a regional sense, individual electricity use choices don’t make a huge difference in the peak demand. However, communities can help ease the strain on the regional grid by avoiding using electricity during the late afternoon if possible.

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