DOE Strengthened Grid, Cyber Defenses During Winter Storm Fern

The Energy Department is modernizing energy production policies to bolster grid security during peak demand times, Secretary Chris Wright said during a press conference Friday following Winter Storm Fern. The storm impacted much of the East Coast and resulted in the largest natural gas withdrawal for heating and electricity, according to records from the Energy Information Administration.

Wright said the department’s proactive response to secure the grid ensured less than one million people lost power compared to 4.5 million during the 2021 Winter Storm Uri in Texas.

“Winter Storm Fern was a much larger storm, and less than a million people lost access to electricity almost entirely from ice on local distribution lines that took poles and lines,” said Wright. “They didn’t lose power because generation failed or because we weren’t able to supply the capacity for the grid.”

Wright said lessons learned from Uri guided the department’s response to ensure grid stability during Winter Storm Fern. He sent a letter to grid operators prior to the storm in late January asking them to prepare backup power generators for data centers and other major facilities. During the storm, grid operators requested and received emergency orders in accordance with the American Power Act Section 202(c) to leverage backup power to prevent avoidable blackouts. The emergency orders directed grid operators to run all electric generating units located within impacted regions at maximum generation output levels and all expire before or on Feb. 14, 2026.

Securing the Grid from Cyber Attacks During the Storm

DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response (CESER) Director Alex Fitzsimmons said that the emergency orders allowed grid operators to power homes and critical infrastructure by removing previous energy policies that capped production limits during peak demand hours.

A recent Energy Department study found that the growing demand for energy along with restrictive policies could lead to 100x more power outages in 2030. He added that nation state actors preposition themselves in the grid, allowing them to take advantage when power outages impact critical infrastructure.

“They want to hold our critical infrastructure at risk for a time and place of their choosing, and the attack surface is expanding. Fortunately, we have very strong partnerships with the energy sector,” said Fitzsimmons.

Fitzsimmons added cyber threat information sharing is a critical part of these partnerships, like CESER’s Energy Threat Analysis Center. The public-private partnership allows approved industry partners to access classified information to identify the most significant threats to the energy system.

“Our job is to get it into the hands of the private sector as rapidly and in an actionable way as we can. We figure out what the vulnerabilities are and then try to mitigate them,” said Fitzsimmons.