Dive Brief:
- The North American Electric Reliability Corp. is in the “final stages of preparing to issue a Level 3 essential actions alert” related to large computational loads unexpectedly disconnecting from the grid, a NERC official confirmed to Utility Dive in an email Monday.
- The alert is expected to be published May 4 and is the result of load loss events in both the Eastern and Texas interconnections that have occurred since 2022, according to a NERC board of trustees meeting agenda last week.
- The alert will include a set of essential actions for transmission owners and operators, reliability coordinators and balancing authorities to take, including changes to the modeling, study, monitoring and commissioning of large loads, including data centers for artificial intelligence.
Dive Insight:
As the grid becomes more complicated to manage, NERC has issued a series of warnings over how the proliferation of new technologies may impact the bulk power system in unexpected ways.
The alert is intended to be implemented “while NERC develops updates to its registry criteria and reliability standards to account for the needs associated with computational loads,” according to the board meeting agenda.
The May alert will follow a Level 2 warning on large loads that NERC issued in September. Responses to the previous warnings illustrated to NERC that “entities generally did not have sufficient processes, procedures, or methods to address emerging computational loads,” NERC said.
NERC has three tiers of email-based alerts it uses to communicate vital information to the power sector, ranging from an advisory to recommendations and essential actions.
According to the September alert, NERC was concerned about a series of “widespread and unexpected customer-initiated load reduction of large loads” that involved multiple events — most in 2024 and 2025 — during which 1,000 MW or more of unexpected large loads output reduction occurred.
“The increase of Large Loads-related events coincides with an increase in Large Load penetration across the BPS,” NERC said in September. Those loads include data centers, cryptocurrency mining facilities, hydrogen electrolyzers, manufacturing facilities and other industrial loads.
Summer peak demand across the bulk power system is forecast to grow by 224 GW over the next 10 years, a more than 69% jump over the prior year’s forecast and a 24% increase from 2025 peak demand, NERC said in its annual Long Term Reliability Assessment, published in January. New data centers account for most of the projected increase.
“Rapid, major swings in load, experienced both in typical operations as well as in response to grid disturbances, can impact the [bulk power system’s] ability to maintain frequency, regulate transmission voltage, and otherwise maintain stability,” NERC warned in September.
The large size and “unique end-use operational characteristics” of the loads “necessitate enhancements” to grid operations, the reliability watchdog said.
Essential actions to be included in the alert include:
- Transmission planners and planning coordinators should “develop a detailed list of modeling data, settings, and parameters” needed from computational loads, and distribute this to transmission owners in their footprint.”
- Planners and coordinators should study the stability margins in their area “at least annually for areas with computational loads.”
- Transmission owners should establish a commissioning process for computational loads and should install and utilize dynamic fault recording devices to analyze computational load facility electrical performance during disturbances.
The proliferation of large loads is not the only new challenge leading NERC to make industry recommendations.
Last May, it issued a Level 3 Alert regarding possible grid disruptions related to inverter-based resources. Solar, wind and battery resources have been known to trip offline during grid disturbances.
