“Keeping the lights on during a dramatic change in the nation’s resource mix may be the single most important challenge of the mid-21st century for utility managers and state and federal regulators,” Roy Jones, ElectriCities CEO.
North Carolina’s public power utilities provide service with 99.98% uptime—reliability far superior to other North Carolina electric providers.
Maintaining the reliability that customers have come to rely on during the historic shift away from centralized generation sources is a challenge that requires planning and coordination at the federal, regional, and state and local levels. While public power utilities continue to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, federal authorities must work concurrently to monitor and maintain grid reliability.
ElectriCities CEO Roy Jones is a leading voice on this issue nationally. Jones serves as vice chairman of the member representatives committee of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the not-for-profit entity created in 1968 to reduce risks to the reliability and security of the continental electric grid. In September 2021 he testified as part of a national panel of experts convened by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to discuss challenges to the reliability of the nation’s electric grid.
Grid reliability is a weighty challenge, but one that can be met with the right planning and coordination from policymakers, regulators, and utilities.
