An unusually warm stretch of October weather across the Mid-Atlantic is putting pressure on the regional power grid this week, and both the grid operator and the U.S. Department of Energy have taken emergency steps in response.
PJM Interconnection, which runs the high-voltage system serving Garrett County along with 12 other states and Washington, D.C., put out a Maximum Generation Alert and a Load Management Alert for Tuesday, Oct. 13. The company pointed to two things working against it at once: temperatures far warmer than normal for mid-October, and a large share of power plants and lines already shut down for scheduled work.
Garrett County is part of that picture. Potomac Edison, the utility that serves most homes and businesses here, sits inside PJM’s territory, and the county’s power generation sources, from the wind turbines on Backbone Mountain to the hydroelectric station at Deep Creek Lake and several solar arrays, send their output into the same network.
Nobody at home needs to do anything differently, according to PJM. The alert is really a message to the companies that own generators and transmission equipment. It asks them to look over any planned repairs or testing and decide whether that work can wait, so more equipment stays running while demand is high. It also gives nearby grid operators a heads-up that PJM may cut back the power it sends their way, and it signals that demand response could be activated. Those are programs where businesses and other customers sign up ahead of time and get paid to scale back their electricity use when the grid is stretched thin.
Washington stepped in the same weekend. Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed an emergency order on Oct. 12 after PJM asked for one, using his authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. Running from Oct. 13 to Oct. 16, the order lets PJM keep certain generators running whenever reliability calls for it, and it temporarily loosens environmental permit restrictions on some of those units.
If conditions get bad enough, PJM can also tell data centers and other big power users to fire up their own backup generators. That step is held for the worst case, right before or during the highest tier of grid emergency, the point at which operators might otherwise have to cut power to customers. Utilities across the region, including the companies that deliver electricity to local homes, can be called on to help carry the order out.
The timing is a big part of the problem. Autumn is when the industry does its heavy maintenance, taking equipment offline after summer so everything is ready when winter cold drives demand back up. PJM says that window usually stretches from the middle of September into early December. A burst of near-summer temperatures in the middle of it leaves less room for error.
PJM has already pulled back as much of that work as it can. On Oct. 11 it recalled every active generator maintenance outage in its territory, with units due back by noon on Oct. 14. Even so, the operator expected about 62,000 megawatts of generating capacity to be unavailable during the stretch, plus a number of important transmission lines that are down for repairs or because of large construction projects nearby.
Emergency orders like this one have become a familiar tool for the region in 2026. The Department of Energy granted PJM similar orders during summer heat waves and again in September.
The Department of Energy estimates more than 35 GW of unused backup generation remains available nationwide.
PJM shares grid updates on its Inside Lines news site at insidelines.pjm.com, and the full federal order can be read at energy.gov.
