In the CRA Sessions podcast series Always on: Reliability in focus, CRA Principal and host Matt Moore interviews Jim Robb, President and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), to discuss the emerging risks and challenges facing the reliability of the North American electric grid. Topics include resource adequacy, grid transformation, extreme weather, AI data center characteristics and large loads, and security.
As the head of NERC, Robb emphasizes the importance of grid security exercises, including NERC’s biannual GridEx exercises, and describes load growth due to AI data centers as “the issue of our time.”
The conversation highlights risks to the grid, a recent Department of Energy Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) on large load interconnections, and improvements to NERC’s Reliability Standards Development Plan. With respect to the NOPR and large load characteristics specific to AI uses, there is a comparison to the standards and reliability oversight processes of inverter-based resources and the balance of establishing standards and practices that foster reliability without forcing significant changes on legacy equipment.
