Taken from another sub:
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the quasi-governmental watchdog that monitors the health of the power grids that span the United States and Canada, has issued a rare Level 3 warning.
The alert marks only the third time NERC has put out a notice with that degree of severity in its 58-year history. The warning comes on the heels of reports that data centers abruptly went offline in Virginia and Texas, prompting concerns of potential blackouts.
“Computational loads, such as data centers, could increase exponentially in the next four years,” NERC said in a draft of the alert, adding that “significant risks” to the power network “need to be addressed through immediate industry action.” Lee Shaver, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told E&E News that NERC’s action was a “big deal.”