The coming decade will see “extraordinary reliability challenges and opportunities” amid rapid changes in the North American electric grid, NERC staff said.

WECC said the addition 80 GW of wind and solar resources to the Western grid in the next decade will require higher planning reserve margins than anticipated.

In its first in-person meeting since the start of the pandemic, NERC’s Reliability and Security Technical Committee gathered this week in St. Paul.

Parts of the U.S. face “elevated or high risk of energy shortfalls” this summer, according to NERC’s upcoming Summer Reliability Assessment.

WECC's annual resource adequacy assessment warned that customers throughout the Western Interconnection will be at risk of load loss by 2025.

Severe weather and rapidly diversifying generation will challenge electric reliability in the next decade, NERC said in its Long-Term Reliability Assessment.