When Winter Storm Fern swept across the United States last month, it served as a stress test for the grid hardening measures that utilities have employed in the last few years. As a large swath of the U.S. froze, there was intense scrutiny of how the grid would hold up.
In Texas, a combination of infrastructure winterization and a diversified grid — including new batteries — allowed ERCOT to hold the line. It was the Southeast that ultimately saw the most outages, due to frozen equipment and iced-over lines.
But the debate over why the grid mostly held continues, with stakeholders tending to view the conversation through the lens of their own resource of choice. Even the U.S. Department of Energy has entered the fray, emphasizing the minimal role of coal in keeping the lights on.
In this live Latitude Dispatch, The Ad Hoc Group founder and CEO Jim Kapsis joins Latitude Media editor Lisa Martine Jenkins to dissect the impact of the storm. We’ll explore how the grid pulled through mostly unscathed compared with Winter Storm Uri five years ago, why the Southeast struggled more than other regions, and what it will take to modernize a grid under growing pressure.
We’ll discuss:
- The role of renewables and storage in Fern, versus the role of fossil fuels
- Whether the grid hardening that utilities have undertaken in recent years was enough
- How grid resilience, especially in the face of major storms, has become a mainstream topic in energy
- And what the main lessons are from Fern that utilities will apply to the next storm.
Bring your questions or submit them ahead of time to editors@latitudemedia.com.
Can’t attend live? Register to receive a recording of the Dispatch.
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