Emergency Tools to Stabilize Grid Are Becoming More Common – Why That’s a Problem

These measures, designed to protect reliability during moments of extreme stress on the electric system, are becoming a more frequent part of NYISO’s operating toolkit. And that’s a troubling signal.

What Exactly Are EOPs?

When grid conditions deteriorate in real time—due to extreme weather, fuel shortages, or equipment failures—NYISO can activate a tiered set of emergency tools. These include public appeals to reduce electricity usage, voltage reduction, and emergency imports from neighboring regions.

Emergency Tools Are Becoming More Common

NYISO’s current resource planning models assume that emergency programs will be available and increasingly relied upon to close any reliability gap. In fact, its 2025-2034 Comprehensive Reliability Plan (CRP), which studies system reliability for the next ten years, concludes that by 2034, emergency operating procedures are projected to be utilized for roughly three times as many hours compared to 2026. But when these programs are used regularly, grid operators have fewer levers to pull when real-time conditions worsen.

This vulnerability materialized in 2025. During both the January cold snap and the June heatwave, grid operators faced challenging conditions beyond what NYISO accounts   for in its usual reliability planning processes, according to the CRP.

One striking indicator: NYISO activated demand response— a critical method of reducing load before EOPs are deployed—22 times during the 2025 peak seasons. In previous years, such activations were rare or nonexistent.

Demand response asks large energy users to reduce consumption during peak periods, often by turning to on-site generators, pausing industrial operations, or implementing rapid conservation measures. While effective, overusing these programs can lead to response fatigue, where participants stop responding or withdraw from programs due to cost or operational burdens.

Increased use of demand response and EOPs, in combination with declining operating margins, signal mounting risk of future supply shortfalls and rising threats to grid reliability.

What’s driving the uptick in EOP activations?

Several forces are converging to tighten New York’s reserve margins and increase reliability risks:

• Declining Reserve Margins: Retirements of fossil fuel plants—especially New York City peaking power plants—are outpacing the addition of new capacity, leaving less power available for unexpected events. The state’s existing fossil fuel fleet is also aging, creating additional risk of failure or outages.
• Rising Demand: Electrification of transportation and heating, along with expanding data center and industrial loads, is pushing peak electricity demand steadily upward.
• Fuel Availability Risks: Winter is becoming as much a reliability concern as summer. Natural gas constraints during cold snaps limit generation availability, just as electrification drives heating loads higher. NYISO forecasts indicate winter reliability risks will continue growing.

How NYISO Plans to  Address It

To address these challenges, NYISO’s new CRP recommends reforms to the current planning approach to better reflect rapid changes in the grid:

• Multi-Future Planning: Moving beyond a single forecast, the CRP evaluates a range of possible futures—including spikes in demand, uncertain resource additions, and evolving policies. The CRP recommends incorporating such scenarios in the formula for determining a reliability need.
• Stress-Testing Reliability: Assessing grid performance under extreme heat, deep cold, delayed transmission projects (such as CHPE), power plant retirements, and variable renewable output. Probabilistic methods help identify where EOPs are likely to be unavoidable.
• Enhanced Winter Preparedness: Incorporating fuel supply constraints and electrification-driven heating demand to better anticipate winter vulnerabilities.

The CRP also calls for new flexible capacity by 2034, including modern gas-fired plants that can replace aging power plants, support renewable growth, and reduce emissions while ensuring adequate supply.

A Warning Sign—And a Call to Action

NYISO’s growing reliance on EOPs can be considered a warning sign that the grid is under pressure from rising demand, fuel constraints, and policy-driven resource changes.

The NYISO is proactively working to enhance its planning process and prepare a comprehensive reliability road map that reduces the reliance on emergency measures in everyday operations.