NERC warns of rising bulk power reliability risks

NERC has announced its 2026 State of Reliability report, saying the North American bulk power system performed reliably in 2025 but faces emerging risks that reduce the margin for error.

• Reliability performance: NERC said the grid remained reliable in 2025, but conventional generation availability declined and forced outage rates rose to 9.2%, above historical norms of 7–8%; coal and combined-cycle units saw 39.8 TWh and 19.1 TWh increases in unavailable energy.
• Load and resource risks: The report highlights a surge in data center and computational loads, including two customer-initiated load reductions above 1,000 MW in 2025, and says NERC is working on alerts, technical conferences, standards work, and proposed “Computational Load Entity” reliability rules; it also notes continued growth in solar, wind, and BESS and ongoing IBR mitigation work.