Post-Storm Freeze to Test US Power Grids as Demand Surges

US power grids are expected to grapple with unprecedented seasonal demand and the threat of blackouts after a damaging winter storm coated parts of the South and Mid-Atlantic in ice — leaving brutal cold in its wake.

More than 800,000 homes and businesses nationwide are currently without electricity as snow and ice wreak havoc on local distribution lines. Grids so far have avoided larger system-level cuts, but frigid wind chills will likely persist all week, testing seasonal power-demand records from New England to Texas.

The PJM Interconnection grid that stretches from Chicago to Washington DC warned late Sunday it’s bracing for seven straight days of extreme demand, representing “a winter streak that PJM has never experienced.” The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as Ercot, is projecting record demand of 86 gigawatts on Monday, which would surpass the previous high set in August 2023.

The threat of a supply squeeze is dire enough that PJM is taking the unusual step of paying some major customers such as manufacturers to curb power use to help prevent the need for rolling, residential blackouts. Ercot is taking similar measures.

Monday will be a day of tests of infrastructure and patience across most of the nation’s major population centers. Brutal cold, a heavy layer of snow and destructive ice accumulations will continue to snarl highway, rail and air travel, including public transit systems in New York, New Jersey and farther afield. Airlines will have a major task in unraveling the chaos from thousands of flight cancellations since the storm emerged late last week.

The US natural gas benchmark jumped as much as 19% to more than $6 per million British thermal units when trading opened late Sunday, a level not seen since 2022.

Dallas is under an extreme cold warning until Tuesday with wind chills expected to plunge as low as -10F (-23C). Overnight lows in Washington DC will struggle to reach 10F for most of the week. The upper Midwest, meanwhile, is shivering, with wind chills around -40F.

Electricity prices have soared and grid operators have been obtaining federal waivers from some pollution limits so they can employ dirtier power-plant fuels such as diesel and coal. The US government also asked grid operators to make backup power available from facilities including data centers.

Meanwhile, some utilities are scrambling to recover from widespread outages. Around 822,000 homes and businesses in the US were without power as of about 2:35 a.m. New York time, according to PowerOutage.us.

The majority of the outages were in Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, a region lashed by a heavy dousing of freezing rain. Some roads were left skating-rink slick by ice more than 0.75 inches (1.9 centimeters) thick that also encased tree branches and power lines.

The prolonged freeze in coming days will increase the risk of power outages as the weight of the ice snaps more limbs on lines. In Mississippi, ice-driven outages knocked some weather stations offline, said Rob Carolan of Hometown Forecast Services Inc., leaving government forecasters and first responders in the dark about conditions.

President Donald Trump approved emergency aid for a dozen states hit by the storm, freeing up federal equipment and offering reimbursement for services such as sheltering and evacuations.

The storm forced thousands of flight cancellations, on a scale not seen since the pandemic. More than 3,500 weekday flights across the US had already been called off as of late Sunday evening, according to statistics from FlightAware.

New York City officials announced that approximately 500,000 public-school students would have remote instruction on Monday.

Day-ahead power prices for Monday in the PJM grid territory are the highest since a disastrous polar vortex in early 2014. In the grids covering New York City and parts of New England, on-peak average prices for Monday also touched all-time highs.

PJM on-peak power for Monday rose to an average of $638.73 a megawatt-hour, according to grid data compiled by MCG Energy Solutions LLC. In Ercot’s North hub that includes Dallas, power for Monday’s peak-demand hours climbed 1,200% from the Sunday average to $516.25 a megawatt-hour, the most since August 2023.

On Sunday, the Energy Department said it issued emergency orders that authorized PJM to run power plants at maximum capability, including those fueled by coal and oil, regardless of limits established under environmental rules or state law. Similar orders to mitigate blackouts were issued for ISO New England and Ercot late Sunday evening.

Meanwhile, the Texas grid is expected to face tight conditions through Monday, with loss of generation and transmission line issues in the San Antonio and Houston areas reported Sunday night. The Energy Department ordered the state’s grid operator to use backup diesel generators at data centers in periods of extreme stress.

In the South, some of the heaviest ice covered northern Mississippi, including the college town of Oxford, which is likely to see up to an inch accumulate through Monday.

The area is buried in “an absolute mess of downed trees and power lines due to the added weight of ice,” forecasters for the National Weather Service wrote in an update Sunday afternoon, noting widespread power outages. “Roads in these areas are extremely dangerous and at times, impassable.”

Photo: A pedestrian during a winter storm in downtown Pittsburgh on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. Photographer: Justin Merriman/Bloomberg