BILLINGS — The U.S. Department of Energy has issued an emergency order Sunday affecting 17 states, including Montana and Wyoming, authorizing the region's primary power manager to bring backup generators online to help prevent outages as extreme heat drives electricity demand to near-record levels.
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The Southwest Power Pool manages the grid across much of the central U.S., including parts of Montana served by cooperatives like Yellowstone Valley Electric Cooperative.
The emergency order represents the final step before a potential Level 3 Energy Emergency Alert, which could trigger rolling blackouts to prevent a larger grid failure.
"A level three, is, you're getting to the point where you need to start considering curtailing," Yellowstone Valley Electric CEO Brandon Wittman said.
Wittman said not all power outages carry the same risk. Some are more common, like public safety shutoffs tied to fires or high winds. Rolling blackouts are much rarer and typically require multiple factors coming together to create major stresses on the power grid.
"It's going to take something more than just heat to cause an outage or a rolling blackout," Wittman said.
Wittman said the emergency order should help reduce the chances of a blackout. He added that even if rolling outages were needed, not every customer would lose power.
"It's not like it rolls across this entire region. They identify certain areas that'll be most beneficial to start turning things off," Wittman said.
Wittman said large industrial users would likely be targeted first.
"You think about some of the really big industrial loads, the Billings area refineries, that sort of thing. That's where shedding load really pays off," Wittman said.
MTN reached out to Phillips 66 to ask what operations would look like during a potential rolling blackout, but the company declined to comment.
While Montana temperatures are expected to stay cooler than many other states at risk, parts of Texas and Louisiana could see temperatures above 110 degrees.
Utility leaders say it is not the extreme heat itself, but how long it lasts, that creates the biggest challenge for the grid.
"It's not just the one day of extreme heat. It's the extended period that really makes a difference where things just don't have the opportunity to cool down overnight and recover," Wittman said.
