Reliability

On April 8, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 14262, Strengthening the U.S. Grid Reliability and Security which directs the DOE to establish a uniform methodology for identifying at risk regions and guide federal reliability interventions, including emergency action under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act.

On July 7, 2025, the Department of Energy released its Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security, fulfilling Section 3(b) of the EO by delivering a uniform methodology to identify at-risk regions and guide federal reliability interventions. This methodology equips DOE and its partners with a powerful tool to identify at-risk regions and guide federal interventions to prevent power outages, accelerate data center deployment, and ensure the grid keeps pace with explosive load growth driven by artificial intelligence and reindustrialization.

Highlights of the Report:

• The status quo is unsustainable. DOE’s analysis shows that, if current retirement schedules and incremental additions remain unchanged, most regions will face unacceptable reliability risks within five years and the Nation’s electrical power grid will be unable to meet expected demand for AI, data centers, manufacturing and industrialization while keeping the cost of living low for all Americans. Staying on the present course would undermine U.S. economic growth, national security, and leadership in emerging technologies.
• Grid growth must match the pace of AI innovation. Electricity demand from AI-driven data centers and advanced manufacturing is rising at a record pace. The magnitude and speed of projected load growth cannot be met with existing approaches to load addition and grid management. Radical change is needed to unleash the transformative potential of innovation.
• Retirements plus load growth increase risk of power outages 100 times in 2030. Allowing 104 GW of firm generation to retire by 2030—without timely replacement—could lead to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation. Modeling shows annual outage hours could increase from single digits today to more than 800 hours per year. Such a surge would leave millions of households and businesses vulnerable. We must renew a focus on firm generation and continue to reverse radical green ideology in order to address this risk.
• Planned supply falls short, reliability at risk. The 104 GW of plant retirements are replaced by 209 GW of new generation by 2030; however, only 22 GW comes from firm baseload generation sources. Even assuming no retirements, the model found outage risk in several regions rises more than 30-fold, proving the queue alone cannot close the dependable-capacity deficit.
• Old tools won’t solve new problems. Traditional peak-hour tests to evaluate resource adequacy do not sufficiently account for growing dependence on neighboring grids.  At a minimum, modern methods of evaluating resource adequacy need to incorporate frequency, magnitude, and duration of power outages, move beyond exclusively analyzing peak load time periods, and develop integrated models to enable proper analysis of increasing reliance on neighboring grids.

What Happens Next

• Coordination with Industry Stakeholders: The report will inform joint planning processes and help integrate modern metrics into national reliability assessment methodology. 
• Ongoing Review: DOE will regularly update the methodology with industry input to reflect emerging technologies, risks, and performance data.