US Department of Energy launches national grid reliability tour in response to rising power demand from AI data centers.

# Grid Reliability Tour: DOE Addresses Rising Power Demand

Officials with the U.S. Department of Energy are kicking off a national tour with their first visit held in Oklahoma City as they seek to collaborate on boosting affordability and reliability of the country's stressed power grid. The tour is being led by Catherine Jereza, the agency's assistant secretary overseeing its Office of Electricity.

In late July, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order directing the Southwest Power Pool, which includes Oklahoma, to use additional resources to respond to dangerous heat across the 17-state region. "On our national grid, the check engine light is on and here it's orange," Jereza said. "The majority of the country is at risk of energy shortfalls."

The talks with utility executives, community leaders and economic development officials follow an analysis showing that if current load growth projections, retirement schedules and incremental additions remain unchanged, most regions face "unacceptable" reliability risks within the next five years. "We know we need a lot more power across the nation," Jereza said. "We're trying to figure out how to add more power as quickly as possible."

Jereza selected OG&E for the first visit because the utility has been a longtime partner and is implementing a $50 million program funded by the Department of Energy to improve automation and speed up detection of outages and recovery efforts. Energy officials are simultaneously looking to expand the use of coal, nuclear power and other alternate sources to prevent further strain on the electric grid. "We're here to make sure I'm not just in isolated D.C. thinking this is how things should be," Jereza said. "We're here in Oklahoma and asking questions—How is this working, and what can we do in partnership?"

Jereza is working with utility companies like OG&E to develop "self-healing" grids where outages are kept to a minimum, particularly during periods like the recent heat wave that hit much of the Southwest Power Pool region. Jereza called OG&E a national model for reliability and affordability. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that in May, Oklahoma ranked third-lowest in the nation for residential rates at 13.38 cents per kilowatt hour, with only Utah and Idaho lower. OG&E reported its rate for the same month was 12.71 cents per kilowatt hour.

Ken Miller, senior vice president for OG&E's Public and Regulatory Affairs office, said the utility is approximately 80 percent complete upgrading its Arkansas territory as part of its $50 million adaptable grid project, approaching 50 percent completion in its Oklahoma territory that includes Oklahoma City. OG&E started its work in Arkansas because that territory had the utility's most troubled circuits. When complete, the $50 million grant is expected to provide grid automation to 92 circuits and 26 substations, improve reliability for an estimated 90,000 OG&E customers, and fund the purchase of two mobile battery systems that can be deployed during critical restoration efforts.

This project drew Jereza to Oklahoma City as she examines partnerships in other states to address reliability, costs and recovery efforts. "It's one thing to spend money, but let's see how that money is being used," Jereza said. "This project will save $17 million in economic losses and disruption costs for customers. That's a real savings that will help keep costs low."

The automation allows utilities to fix outages without waiting a half-hour for a lineman to reach the location. During a visit to an OG&E control room, Jereza was shown how within four minutes of a vehicle knocking down a power pole, engineers restored power to 450 customers, an additional 300 in 30 minutes, and the remainder within three hours. "It could have been something that extended throughout the day," Jereza said. "That's what this project is about. It's faster response, happier customers, and when it comes to hot days, that's really important because we need to keep everybody cool."

As utility companies face rising demand, they are also being tasked with providing more power for an influx of data centers being built to support growing artificial intelligence use by both homes and businesses. These data centers face community opposition across the country from those concerned about their water and electricity consumption for cooling computer servers. President Donald Trump asked utilities nationwide to sign a ratepayer protection pledge in response to these concerns, and OG&E is among those that signed.

Jereza acknowledged that the pledge is non-binding. "It starts with the leadership, so it's great that President Trump brought all these leaders to sign the pledge and then even more signed the pledge," Jereza said. "But signing a pledge is one thing. Execution is another. FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is working on rules because they have the economic authority to regulate the markets."

The Department of Energy is working with state and industry leaders to develop solutions addressing rising demand from data centers, including research on best practices. "We're working with them to ensure it will be the technology companies that will pay for the infrastructure upgrades and not families doing that," Jereza said. "Ultimately, when you have shared infrastructure, that lowers costs for everyone, modernizes the infrastructure and improves reliability."