Infrastructure Briefing — January 8, 2026

Executive briefing: The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment underscores elevated resource adequacy risk through 2026 for the Midcontinent (MISO), Southwest Power Pool (SPP), and the Western Interconnection when extreme weather coincides with generator derates and fuel constraints. Coal and gas retirements continue to outpace firm replacement capacity, and pipeline deliverability concerns during cold snaps expose gas-fired units. Operators are expected to demonstrate firm fuel arrangements, tested winterization controls, and demand-response deployments that can stabilize the system during polar vortex and heat dome events.

Operational actions for 2025–2026

Fuel security. Secure firm transportation contracts and onsite storage for priority gas units; document dual-fuel testing results and replenishment timelines.
Winter readiness. Complete cold-weather inspections on generators and transmission assets, verifying heat tracing, insulation, and moisture controls for instrumentation exposed to subfreezing temperatures.
Demand-side posture. Expand aggregations of controllable load and under-frequency load shedding drills that align with regional reliability coordinator instructions.

Planning and coordination

Accreditation updates. Incorporate ambient derate assumptions and outage correlations into capacity accreditation for wind, solar, and storage resources.
Gas-electric coordination. Conduct joint tabletop exercises with pipeline operators to validate communication timelines, critical customer designations, and restart priorities under emergency conditions.
Transmission constraints. Identify single points of failure for constrained interfaces and stage remedial action schemes or redispatch plans ahead of peak seasons.

Evidence for regulators and boards

Maintain records of cold-weather retrofit completions, protection settings changes, and valve/fuel-system inspections for generating units serving constrained areas.
Document performance of demand response, blackstart resources, and voltage support tools during drills and actual events, highlighting improvements since the 2021 and 2022 winter disturbances.
Provide board and state commission briefings that tie LTRA risk statements to specific mitigation investments and staffing requirements for 2025–2026.

Sources

Zeph Tech aligns NERC risk findings with fuel security plans, winterization tasking, and demand-response activation guides for vertically integrated utilities and independent system operators.