A recent episode of Independence Institute’s* PowerGab energy podcast looked at how the electric grid performed during Winter Storm Fern, which hammered a large swath of the U.S. in late January, including a sub-zero cold-snap in Colorado that broke multiple daily low temperature records.
Hosts Jake Fogelman and Amy Cooke describe the storm as a real-world “stress test” for the U.S. and Colorado electric grids, noting that fossil fuel generation—particularly natural gas and coal—supplied the majority of electricity, keeping the lights on and homes heated during the coldest hours.
In Colorado specifically, roughly 66% of electricity came from natural gas and about 19% from coal, while renewable sources such as wind and solar played a diminished role. The hosts point to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showing renewable generation as limited during the storm, meaning heavier reliance on fossil fuels, specifically noting Colorado’s Comanche 2 coal plant as critical to grid reliability during the most demanding periods.
Although about one million people lost power nationwide, the hosts stress that outages were largely caused by ice damaging power lines, not by a shortage of generating capacity. Overall, they conclude that the grid performed well under extreme conditions, thanks mostly to fossil fuel generation.
You can see the entire episode here, or watch it below.
