Power Plant Outages Surge amid Restricted Gas Supplies and Frigid Weather

Power plant outages surged along the eastern United States on Sunday as constricted natural gas supplies and frigid temperatures cut the electricity output of the region's generation fleet.

The PJM Interconnection, the largest U.S. regional grid that serves 67 million people in the East and Mid-Atlantic, reported nearly 21 gigawatts of generation outages, with most of that capacity being forced offline. Those outages represented about 16 percent of PJM's Sunday afternoon demand of 127.4 GW.

On Sunday afternoon, PJM issued a pre-emergency order mandating that some customers in its curtailment program curb their electricity use. Customers in the program get paid to curb their electricity during critical periods.

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