The Trump administration’s effort on Friday to head off an electricity crisis in the central U.S. was a thousand miles off the mark.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered the Midcontinent Independent System Operator to keep a Michigan coal-fired power plant open over the summer, citing the “risk of blackouts.” Less than 48 hours later, MISO implemented rolling outages in Louisiana, partly because it was short on generation amid a heat wave.
The coincidence highlights the complexity of bolstering the country’s grid, even as the Trump administration pushes more fossil fuels as the answer to rising electricity demand.
On Sunday, MISO ordered Louisiana utilities Entergy and Cleco to implement rotating outages to reduce demand by 600 megawatts to maintain the reliability of the broader bulk power grid, according to MISO spokesperson Brandon Morris. About 100,000 customers lost power for part of the day, mostly in and around New Orleans.
