Map Shows States Under Emergency Order to Stop Blackouts

The U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order on July 26 to help keep the lights on across a large part of the country. The order covers 17 states in the central and western United States, where a dangerous heat wave is causing people to use record amounts of electricity. Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed the order to make sure power plants could send extra electricity to the grid before any blackouts could happen.

The emergency order was directed at a group called the Southwest Power Pool, or SPP. SPP manages how electricity moves across a huge area — about 732,000 square miles — and has more than 85,000 miles of power lines. The order told SPP it could turn on backup power plants and order them to run as needed to keep power flowing. The order was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, August 3.

SPP had asked for the emergency order after warning that the power grid was getting very tight. Power plant outages, lower wind energy output, and less electricity coming in from nearby grids were all putting stress on the system. Before the order, SPP asked people to voluntarily use less electricity, and that helped avoid blackouts for a short time.

Secretary Wright also used the moment to criticize energy policies from the Biden administration. He said those policies had taken away reliable energy sources. Supporters of those earlier policies say they helped the environment and made the grid stronger over time. Critics argue that closing down older power plants too quickly can make it harder to keep the lights on during extreme weather.

The Department of Energy said that more than 35 gigawatts of backup power are still available across the country. A gigawatt is a very large unit of electricity — enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes. The agency said this backup power would help make sure families and businesses have affordable and reliable electricity during the heat emergency.

The states covered by the order include Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Minnesota, and Utah. Some states are fully included, while others are only partly in SPP's service area. Together, these states make up a massive stretch of the central and western United States.

Forecasters warned that the dangerous heat is not going away soon. The National Weather Service said extreme heat would stay across parts of the central United States all week, hitting hardest in Texas, Oklahoma, and along the Gulf Coast. Temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma were expected to reach the low 100s Fahrenheit, with heat index readings between 105 and 115 degrees.

The heat is also expected to spread further west by the weekend. Parts of the Southwest could see temperatures between 115 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit, while the Intermountain West and northern High Plains could reach the 90s to low 100s. Weather experts described the heat risk as major to extreme, meaning it poses serious health dangers, and warned it could last into late the following week.