Morgan Griffith on Preventing Blackouts

Editorial comment: This is timely. I think yesterday was the second day this year I've thought the office could benefit from the Lasko fan. (Your local hardware store probably has a crop of new window-type fans in search of loving homes.) We in the Point of Virginia have enjoyed three months with very little need for climate control.

(Last week's refrigerator-like nighttime temperatures...I thought, "Don't touch that hot-air fan. Put on your tabard," at myself. Then I considered the baby kitten in the office, and touched that hot-air fan.)

We have those "older" power plants, "old" as in, what, ten years? Fifteen? Do we need to keep replacing things every ten years, or do we need to build them better the first time? We do need to keep them working; don't need people dying of heat exhaustion in their fully electric climate-controlled apartments in the local warming zones in the Hump and the Swamp. 

But, fellow Virginians, we've got plenty of sunshine going to waste. We've got literally tons of biomass and all we're doing with it is dumping it, maybe with a pool chlorine tablet tossed in here and there, into the Tennessee River where our neighbor State gets most of its drinking water. Most of our homes and all of our towns could be producing renewable energy, without relying on hazardous resources like nuclear plants, or on stripping or deep-mining what's left of our coal. Why are we not doing this? Why are APCo, PEPCo, and Dominion not being more proactive in wiring our southwest-facing roofs to be clean energy producers? 

The Ninth District is the home of many people who are retired, disabled, just plain poor, or under the impression that we've become a culture that encourages welfare-cheating. Making assumptions about what the lardbuckets ahead of us in the checkout line are buying, or why, or what they ought to be buying or doing instead, is not likely to help. Demanding that some of our biggest and most directly interested corporations stop enabling the welfare cheats with handout programs, and start empowering all of us to collect payment for what we have to offer to the rest of Virginia, is what we need to be doing.

My home could very easily be generating five times as much electricity as I consume, even in winter. So could some of yours. Please let Congressman Griffith know that these companies don't need insurance for high-risk deep mining and nuclear power schemes; they need to focus on the transition the Point of Virginia should be making, right now, from consumption to production of electricity. Yes, new energy sources need to be regulated. Yes, companies need to know that they'll be monitored to ensure that community biomass burners are burning primarily sewage, a little landfill-type waste, occasional prunings, but no trees. Yes, companies need to know that the solar collectors in which they're investing must come with adequate gutters and filters to keep batteries from eroding into the water supply. That is what Congress is for. We need no shortsighted grabs at the short-term cash infusion, and long-term risks to life, presented by that "small nuclear reactor" some fools have babbled about putting in Wise County. We need intelligent investment in Wise County, and in Scott, Lee, Buchanan, and the other counties in the Ninth District. Do we need it now? We needed it years ago. 

Our entire Congress need to take a firm line with the corporations. NO talk about nuclear plants, about deepening mines, or about strip mining, until we're fully optimized for solar energy production and until our river water is entering Tennessee (or the Chesapeake Bay) 100% sewage-free.

From US Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

Many families have prepared for the return of summer.

Plans include pool parties, barbecues and vacations.

Some plans will account for summer heat. Air conditioning and other tools will be increasingly used to keep homes cool.

This increased electricity demand means that our electric grid will be under greater stress.

We are already hearing of potential breaking points this summer in our electric grid.

The Friday before Memorial Day, Energy Secretary Wright issued an emergency order directing the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) to ensure a coal-fired power plant in Michigan remained operational.

Wright issued the order to minimize the risk of blackouts ahead of the high electricity demand expected.

New Orleans is part of MISO, a regional grid operator that provides transmission service to all or part of 15 U.S. states as well as Manitoba, Canada.

Notwithstanding keeping the plant open, the New Orleans metro area suffered a large and unexpected power outage during Memorial Day weekend. At the blackout’s peak, more than 100,000 customers lost electricity.

According to news website Axios, utilities were aware of the strain on the grid for at least 48 hours before the disruption.

Reports confirmed that two of the region’s nuclear power plants lost connection to the grid. One was due to expected maintenance, the other was unexpected. Constrained by a lack of energy supply, grid operators cut power to customers in New Orleans.

Entergy, an electric utility company in the region, said that the forced outages directed by MISO were done to prevent a larger scale and more prolonged power outage from impacting the electric grid.

This blackout was not the only major power outage in recent memory.

On April 28, Portugal and Spain witnessed the worst blackout in their history, affecting 55 million people, per British newspaper The Guardian.

Airports were shut down, cars drove on streets without traffic lights, hospitals resorted to backup generators and some people were stuck in elevators!

While the Iberian Peninsula blackout continues to be investigated, it is interesting to note that on April 16, Spain reported its first weekday where its national power grid was 100% reliant on renewable power.

A coincidence? Maybe, maybe not!

Coincidentally, in a recent Virginia Tech press release, professor and Power and Energy Center director Dr. Ali Mehrizi-Sani highlighted how the systems that control these clean energy sources are more susceptible to blackouts.

As parts of the world transition to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, the lack of seamless grid adaptation to the use of these sources, as illustrated by the blackout in Spain and Portugal and by experts like Dr. Mehrizi-Sani, threatens destabilization of electric grids and more blackouts.

For years in Congress, I actively warned about the threats posed by leftist policies that attempted to gut our grid’s reliance on fossil fuels and convert to renewables.

Federal policies, like the Obama-era “War on Coal” and the Biden Administration’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), shunning reliable baseload forms of energy like coal and natural gas have made our electric grid more vulnerable to failure.  

California’s reliance on renewables continues to subject residents to rolling brownouts. California has since, seemingly, mitigated the issue, but accordingly has one of the highest electricity rates in the country.

In 2013, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) announced plans to close eight coal-fired power units, citing a flat demand for power.

They have already closed five, but have opened several natural gas power plants.

TVA customers have experienced rolling brownouts as energy demand increases.

I have already introduced a bill this year to help improve our electric grid.

H.R. 3632, the Power Plant Reliability Act of 2025, allows states and regional grid operators to delay proposed closures of baseload power plants forced on them by state or federal mandates and regulations until a reliability solution is implemented.

This bill was passed by the House Energy Subcommittee on June 5.

There are also elements of the House reconciliation bill that support our electric grid. 

In the House bill, we curtail some IRA tax credits, which disincentivize coal and natural gas power plants. We kept the incentives for nuclear because of its significant potential for baseload power.

We also create an energy project insurance pool to help protect energy investors from permits being revoked for coal, oil, critical minerals, natural gas or nuclear installations.

This de-risking compensation fund will make it harder for federal policies to discourage and phase out these reliable sources of energy.

I will continue advocating for reliable energy solutions that secure America’s electric power grid!

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.

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