PJM Interconnection Issues Cold Weather Alerts For Jan. 19 - Western Region; Jan. 20 Entire Regional Electric Grid

On January 16, the PJM Interconnection issued a Cold Weather Alert for its Western Region for January 19 and a Cold Weather Alert for its entire footprint serving 13 states and D.C. for January 20.

The Western Region includes these Pennsylvania electric utilities: Duquesne Light, West Penn Power and Penn Power.

A Cold Weather Alert is a routine procedure PJM issues in advance of significantly cold weather conditions expected for all or parts of the region PJM serves. 

Low temperatures are expected to reach single digits in PJM’s Western Region on Monday and expanding into the rest of the region PJM serves on Tuesday.

When issued, PJM communicates with generation owners to tell them to be prepared to call in additional staff to get all units running for when electricity use begins to increase. 

Generation owners must take extra care to maintain equipment so that it does not freeze in the cold [in particular natural gas-fired power plants] and are reminded to provide updated information to PJM on limitations to their units, including time required to start and the max and min times that their units can run once started.

A Cold Weather Alert can also be used to defer or reschedule planned generation maintenance outages and/or transmission outages and/or recall transmission/generator outages, if necessary.

PJM Winter Preparations

PJM expects to have 180,800 MW of winter operational capacity to serve its seasonal forecasted peak demand for this winter. 

This expectation is based on PJM and the PJM resources continuing to take operational steps to improve generator performance during extreme winter conditions.

PJM has added approximately 4,800 MW of new generation (nameplate capacity) since last winter, most of it solar; that translates to approximately 1,000 MW more operational capacity for the 2025–2026 winter.

To develop its winter scenario forecasts, PJM analyzes expected electricity demand, weather predictions and other factors. 

The National Weather Service predicts a slightly warmer winter for the Atlantic seaboard, with typical temperatures – but above-average precipitation – in PJM’s midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

PJM and stakeholders take a number of actions to prepare for cold weather, outlined in its Cold Weather Preparation Guideline and Checklist, contained in Manual 14D (PDF) Attachment N. 

These protocols incorporate lessons learned from past severe events, including Winter Storm Elliott (2022), Winter Storm Uri (2021) and Winter Storm Enzo (2025).

Read more about PJM’s winter operations preparations.

Click Here for the PJM announcement.

Related Articles This Week:

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[Posted: January 16, 2026]  PA Environment Digest