NERC president warns Arizona committee of growing grid reliability risks amid rapid resource change

Jim Rahm, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), told the Arizona House Committee on Natural Resources, Energy and Water on an afternoon hearing that the electric grid faces a period of “hyper complexity” as generation, weather and cyber threats change rapidly.

Rahm said NERC’s mandate is to “assure the reliability of the bulk power system across North America,” and that three forces—shifts in the resource mix toward inverter-based resources, deeper and broader extreme weather, and increased cyber and physical threats—are stressing the system.

The presentation noted that replacing traditional thermal generators with large amounts of wind and solar changes how the grid maintains frequency and voltage because inverters do not inherently “create the grid” in the same way synchronous machines do. Rahm warned that synchronous-plant retirements and resource shortfalls are accelerating: NERC’s assessment cited roughly 80 gigawatts of confirmed retirements in the next five years and an additional 37 gigawatts likely to retire, and projected a need for roughly 30 gigawatts of new generation over the next decade under recent demand forecasts.

“We are operating in what I call a real toxic threat landscape,” Rahm said, calling out nation-state and criminal cyber actors and a rise in physical attacks on grid infrastructure. He also described events in which large numbers of inverter-equipped resources tripped in unison after a small grid disturbance and led to the loss of about 1,700 megawatts in West Texas—an outcome that, he said, illustrates the integration challenge.

On policy responses, Rahm urged faster siting and permitting for generation and transmission, acceleration of interconnection queue processing, and attention to fuel and pipeline reliability for natural gas. He said balancing resources—today largely natural-gas-fired plants—remain essential while long-duration storage technology matures, and added that nuclear could be part of the solution if cost and spent-fuel issues are addressed.

Committee members asked about federal funding and costs, battery duration, and the feasibility of small modular reactors. Rahm said the capital need will be large and that interest-rate and economic conditions affect project economics. He described typical battery storage projects as four-hour systems for current deployments and said the sector lacks commercially-deployed long-duration storage at scale.

Rahm closed by offering NERC staff and its Western interconnection affiliate as resources for state questions about the West and invited follow-up from committee members.

Ending: Committee members thanked Rahm and indicated they would forward additional technical questions to him and his colleague in attendance.