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March 19, 2026
RTO Insider
DOE Defends Use of Emergency Orders in Court Filing
J.H. Campbell plant
Michigan Public Power Agency
The Department of Energy argued its use of Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to keep retiring power plants online is well within its authority in response to an ongoing emergency on the grid.
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CenterPoint's F.B. Culley coal plant
Sterling Industrial
Groups Contest Indiana Coal Plants’ Emergency Extensions at D.C. Circuit
Public interest organizations have taken their challenge of the Department of Energy’s emergency orders keeping two Indiana coal plants operating past their planned retirement dates to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Constellation will sell the Hay Road power plant and four others to LS Power.
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LS Power to Buy 4.4 GW of Power Generation Assets in PJM
The agreement announced March 18 is valued at $5 billion before closing adjustments, or approximately $1,142/kW of capacity.
ERO Insider
NERC's Standards Committee held its monthly meeting in Juno Beach, Fla., on March 18.
NERC
NERC to Trial MSPPTF Recommendations in Large Loads Project
A new standards development project will be a testbed for some of the proposals by NERC's Modernization of Standards Processes and Procedures Task Force.
RTO Insider
Western Area Power Administration
WestTEC Report Fuels Calls for Regional Transmission Task Force
The Western Transmission Expansion Coalition’s 10-year outlook has spurred talks about increased coordination between jurisdictions to upgrade or build 12,600 miles of transmission in the West and fueled calls for states to create a task force to streamline permitting and other issues.
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MISO control room
MISO
MISO Expects Expenses to Rise Through 2030
MISO said its most recent financial estimates show operating costs continuing to creep up through 2030, making $500 million annual operating budgets the norm and forcing it to collect more from members.
ISO-NE Refines Details on Asset Condition Reviewer
Updating stakeholders on its proposal for an internal asset condition reviewer, ISO-NE said it now plans to review asset condition projects estimated by transmission owners to exceed $25 million in regionalized costs.
Wash. Lawmakers Approve Bill to Create Transmission Authority
The Washington Senate passed a bill to establish a transmission authority intended to help the state improve system capacity and meet growing demand by reducing the timeline to complete new transmission projects.
ERO Insider
RSTC members attend the quarterly meeting in Phoenix.
NERC
NERC RSTC Prepares for New Role in Standards Process
NERC's Reliability and Security Technical Committee approved multiple technical documents while preparing for a higher-profile role in the standards development process.
AI’s Rapid Growth Increases Risks to U.S. Grid
A speaker at a recent Texas RE webinar discussed the potential risks posed by the growth of artificial intelligence.
SERC Speakers Warn of Rapidly Evolving Security Threats
Speakers at a SERC Reliability-hosted webinar discussed the need for communication to address rapidly evolving threats to the security of electric facilities.
NetZero Insider
Meta
N.J. Bills Targeting Balcony Solar, Nuclear and PJM Move Ahead
New Jersey legislators backed a bill that would require operators of AI data centers and crypto mining facilities to run them with clean energy and submit an energy use plan to the state.
New Alaska Coal-fired Plant Mentioned at Energy Summit
The Trump administration announced energy, technology and resource deals worth $56 billion coming out of an Asia-Pacific energy security summit.
CAISO Looks to Improve Data Quality from Solar, Wind, Battery Resources
CAISO is proposing new methods to address “poor quality data” from some variable energy resources in the region in order to improve grid forecasting, the ISO said in a straw proposal.
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AEP
White House, Data Center Pledges Signify Little; The Real Risks Lie Elsewhere
The White House meeting and associated industry pledge were perhaps good theater, but would have been much more valuable a year or two ago, writes columnist Peter Kelly-Detwiler.
Brattle: Better Grid Utilization Key to $100B+ Savings
A new study quantifies some of the benefits that could come from more fully using the existing capacity of the grid before expanding the grid to meet demand growth from data centers and other large loads.
Alternative Western RA Program Starts to Take Shape
Participants in CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market likely would remain subject to the market’s daily resource sufficiency evaluation even if they joined a new resource adequacy program that’s being crafted.
House Energy Committee Probes Grid’s Performance During Winter Storm
NERC CEO Jim Robb said in congressional testimony that while the bulk power system made it through the late January winter storm reliably, the weather highlighted how at risk it is.
TransAlta's Centralia Power Plant in Centralia, Wash.
Steven Baltakatei Sandoval, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
DOE Extends Order to Keep Centralia Coal Plant Online
The Department of Energy extended an order that will continue to keep Washington’s last remaining coal-fired plant open past its long-scheduled retirement at the end of 2025.
Overhead view of a large power transformer ready for delivery
Hitachi Energy
Transform the Physical Energy System to Unleash its Digital Transition
The digital world may be driving much of the growth in electricity demand, but physical limits are shaping how the industry responds. And few limits are more apparent than the shortage of transformers.
ERO Insider
A chart showing respondents' forecasts of demand from large loads by the end of 2028 and 2030. NERC warned that the certainty of these projections is questionable because of differing definitions of "large loads" and "forecast."
NERC
NERC: Large Load Responses Show Action Needed from ERO
Summarizing the findings from its 2025 Level 2 alert on large loads, NERC warned most entities have not met its recommendations.
Grid Strategies Calls NERC LTRA Too Pessimistic
Grid Strategies wrote that NERC's Long-Term Reliability Assessment did not consider some factors that could address potential energy shortfalls.
NERC Report Reviews ‘Shoulder Season’ Load-shedding Events
A new report from NERC reviewed several incidents in which unexpected strains during spring or fall led to load shedding.
AES Indiana to Pay $90K for NERC Violations
FERC approved settlements with AES Indiana and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District for violations of reliability standards.
Participants in the GridEx VIII distributed play by state or province, with the change from GridEx VII in parentheses. Participants with operations in multiple states/provinces are counted by the location of their headquarters.
NERC
Report: GridEx VIII Highlighted Areas for Improvement
NERC's report on the GridEx VIII security exercise outlined the challenges that participants weathered during the distributed play and executive tabletop.
NERC's CIP standards (left) represented the most-reported violations in 2025, with five standards accounting for more than 800 noncompliances. The most-reported standard in the operations and planning category, PRC-005, accounted for only 89 violations in the same time period.
NERC
NERC Says Violation Backlog Dropped in 2025
In their annual report, NERC's Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Program and Organization Registration and Certification Program said the ERO's backlog of violations dropped by nearly 50% in 2025.
MOTUWETHFRSASU
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Industry Gatherings
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NetZero Insider
Gov. Maura Healey
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Mass. Gov. Healey Issues Order to Procure 10 GW of Power by 2035
Amid uncertainty about how New England will meet rising demand in the coming decades, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey issued an executive order to procure 10 GW of new power and 5 GW of energy storage by 2035.
Vineyard Completes Construction, Revolution Starts Generation
One New England offshore wind farm has completed construction, and another has begun sending electricity ashore as it finishes construction.
EV Capacity More Than Battery Storage in California, CEC Finds
California’s historic battery storage boom over the past five years has not kept up with EV capacity growth in the state — and now officials want to send idle electrons back to buildings, homes and the grid through new bidirectional chargers.
Virginia Legislature Wraps Up, Passes Clean Energy Bills
The Virginia General Assembly wrapped up its session and Democrats used the power they won in November's elections to push through bills favoring clean energy as the state faces significant load growth from data centers.
TVA's Watts Bar nuclear plant is among those the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has designated for enhanced oversight.
Shutterstock
NRC Finds Minor Violations, Elevates Oversight of 5 Reactors
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that 90 of the nation’s 95 operational commercial nuclear reactors met the highest category of performance in the 2025 oversight process.
Shutterstock
Policy Roundup: DOJ Sues California on EVs; DOE Offers $1.9B for ATTs
The Trump administration is suing California over its mandates for electric vehicles and offering $1.9 billion for advanced transmission.