(The Center Square) – Winter storms can topple power lines, but surging demand and extreme cold can also cause power plants to falter – triggering broader disruptions to the electric grid.
Frigid temperatures during Winter Storm Elliott in 2022 pushed electricity demand high, while power plants across PJM Interconnection’s footprint experienced outages, prompting multiple emergency procedures to avoid widespread blackouts. Experts say resilience to these events can be strengthened by deploying newer grid technologies and bringing more renewable energy and storage resources online.
According to the grid operator, at the peak of the storm, 24% of its generating capacity was unexpectedly offline, and gas-fired power plants accounted for about 70% of the unplanned outages. In very low temperatures, natural-gas plants can be vulnerable to mechanical failures and fuel delivery constraints when homes and power plants compete for the same gas.
Jon Gordon, policy director for Advanced Energy United, told The Center Square that while it has taken aggressive steps to secure gas supplies, temperatures dipping into the single digits, as we’re seeing now, can still present challenges.
He said there is an opportunity in the region to improve winter resilience at lower cost by scaling advanced energy resources such as storage, demand response, and virtual power plants.
In the past, he said, excess generation helped keep prices low and made reliability events easier to ride through. Over time, older low-cost plants have aged and retired faster than new generation has come online, tightening supply – especially during extreme cold when both electricity and natural gas demand can spike simultaneously.
Gordon also pointed to global supply chain constraints, noting that a decade ago new gas plants could be built in one to three years, compared with today’s five-to-seven-year wait for turbines. With only a handful of turbine manufacturers worldwide, he said, competition for equipment can overshadow incentives or efforts to expedite projects. “That’s why, at United, we keep talking about things that can be built more quickly – demand side opportunities like virtual power plants – and certain types of renewable energy,” he said.
Gordon agrees the grid can’t run solely on renewables, but argues that expanding alternatives can relieve stress on the system during peak conditions. He added that as technologies improve, battery storage costs are falling – and pairing it with intermittent renewables like wind and solar can improve reliability.
While acknowledging recent actions PJM has taken to address supply and demand concerns, he is critical of how it handled the backlog of clean energy projects in the interconnection queue.
As older coal plants retired, renewables were expected to replace them, but the interconnection process – which relies on complex engineering studies – became overwhelmed by thousands of smaller clean energy projects. Study timelines stretched for years, and the queue was ultimately closed in 2022, slowing clean energy projects from connecting.
Gordon contends PJM should have anticipated the surge and redesigned its study process sooner.
He said the impact is enormous: since 2020, about 227 GW of clean energy projects withdrew from the queue – more than the system’s roughly 160 GW of total existing generation capacity – because projects waited so long, some went bankrupt, or it became uneconomic amid supply chain disruptions and changing market conditions.
According to a PJM 2025 Year in Review report, since 2023, it has processed more than 170,000 MW of new generation requests with 30,000 MW left in the queue to be processed in 2026. It also says its new Cycle process opens in April, with a one- to two-year timeline for reviews depending on the system. In 2025, approximately 3,045 MW of new generation was added from solar (2,761 MW), wind (255 MW) and coal (29 MW) resources.
It also notes that roughly 57 GW of projects have completed studies and have either signed or been offered generation interconnection agreements, allowing them to proceed to construction, though many remain delayed by permitting, siting, and supply chain constraints.
A separate report says that since February 2025, 398 impact studies were completed and that 522 New Service Requests withdrew, while citing a net $604.4 million increase in network upgrades tied to Interconnection Service Agreements, project scope changes, and cancellations.
The bottom line, Gordon said, is that withdrawals account for a substantial share of what gets labeled as processed. When describing their reforms as successful, he said, they cite 170 GW as processed but much of that total – 153 GW since 2022 – reflects voluntary withdrawals.
PJM says it is further streamlining interconnection reviews by adding milestones and financial deposits to encourage the most viable projects. It has also announced a multiyear collaboration with Google and Tapestry to deploy AI-enhanced tools intended to speed application processing and improve accuracy. Alongside added automation and expanded staffing, it says these changes are already improving review quality and driving down the backlog.
