The U.S. Department of Energy ordered Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC to dispatch backup generation resources across North and South Carolina after the utility warned regulators it could not guarantee reliable service through a stretch of late-summer heat. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright signed the directive, Order No. 202-26-48, the same day Duke filed its request. The order took effect on September 18, 2026, and expires September 21, covering a narrow four-day window when demand and thin daylight hours were expected to collide.
The mechanism is one the Trump administration has leaned on repeatedly this year: an emergency order under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, a Depression-era statute that lets the federal government direct specific power plants to run regardless of normal market rules or environmental permits. Duke’s application, filed September 18, cited the risk of blackouts if backup capacity stayed offline during the hottest hours of the week.
Inside Order No. 202-26-48’s dispatch authority
The order itself is narrow and mechanical. Order No. 202-26-48 authorizes Duke to dispatch specified backup resources and to order their operation as needed to maintain reliability across its North and South Carolina service territory. It also gives Duke, working with its transmission owners, the authority to direct backup generation to run as a last resort before the utility has to declare what grid operators call an Energy Emergency Alert Level 3, or during one if it happens anyway.
That sequencing matters. An EEA3 is the alert level just short of controlled outages — the point where a grid operator is telling utilities to prepare to shed load. Giving Duke authority to activate backup generation before reaching that stage is meant to head off rolling blackouts rather than respond to them once they start.
Section 202(c) and the Federal Power Act’s emergency lever
Section 202(c) predates the modern electric grid by decades, but it has become one of the administration’s preferred tools for propping up generation capacity it argues has been retired too fast. Wright framed the Carolinas order in exactly those terms. “It should come as no surprise that during the end of summer and early fall, there are fewer hours of daylight — and therefore, less power generation from solar power,” Wright said. “While past leaders’ energy subtraction policies have made the grid more vulnerable to blackouts when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, this administration remains committed to using every available tool to prevent blackouts.”
Wright also cited warnings from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation about the danger late-summer temperature spikes pose when reliable capacity has already been retired. The Department of Energy said its own estimate puts more than 35 gigawatts of unused backup generation available nationwide — capacity that, under normal rules, sits idle rather than feeding the grid.
Section 202(c) predates almost every other tool a modern grid operator has available. It gives the federal government power to order a specific plant to run during a declared emergency, overriding state permitting and market-dispatch rules that would otherwise keep that capacity offline. The authority has existed since the 1930s, but how aggressively an administration invokes it varies; Wright’s Duke order treats it as a routine lever rather than a rare exception, deploying it against a four-day weather window rather than a multi-week crisis.
Late-summer solar decline squeezes the grid at dusk
The timing explanation is straightforward even if the politics around it are not. As days shorten heading into fall, solar generation drops off earlier in the evening, right as air conditioning demand from a lingering heat stretch is still peaking. That gap between when solar output falls and when demand finally eases is the exact window utilities worry about most, because it is when a grid already running hot has the least cushion.
Duke’s request did not detail which specific backup units it planned to bring online under the order, and the department’s release did not name individual plants. What both documents describe instead is a standing pool of capacity — some of it fossil-fueled, some of it held in reserve for exactly this kind of emergency — that the order frees Duke to use without the usual regulatory friction. Utilities nationwide typically hold a mix of gas-fired peaker units and diesel generators for exactly this scenario, because that kind of generation can start within minutes rather than the hours a larger baseload plant needs to ramp up.
A parallel emergency order for Indiana’s coal fleet
The Carolinas order did not arrive in isolation. The department’s own site linked it directly to a separate release issued the same day, describing administration moves to keep coal plants in Indiana operating to support grid reliability there. Wright’s Duke order and the Indiana action both invoke the same emergency-authority framework and the same rationale: aging reliable capacity is being retired faster than replacement generation can come online, and 202(c) is the tool being used to bridge the gap in the meantime.
Whether that bridge becomes a recurring feature of each hot or cold snap is an open question the department has not addressed directly. Duke will need to file again the next time it wants the same authority, and nothing in Order No. 202-26-48 extends automatically past September 21. For now, the order simply buys four days of flexibility for a system regulators judged too tight for comfort.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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