The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)’s latest  Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA), released in January 2026, showed intensifying resource reliability risks in regions across the U.S. over the next decade. While the LTRA raises some important concerns about reliability in this new era of surging demand growth, Grid Strategies’ analysis demonstrates that the severity of the risk may be less than assessed. With this analysis, we provide a more comprehensive picture of adequacy risks that account for likely-to-connect generation, the value of both firm and non-firm interregional transmission, and limitations in load forecasting that can overestimate large loads.

Although this re-assessment demonstrates a reduced reliability risk given different—and more comprehensive—underlying assumptions, the fact remains that delays to interconnecting new generation and a lack of investment in interregional transmission are two of the foremost factors creating reliability risk. With a clearer vision of the future and rapid action, the grid could be even more reliable in five years than it is today. Access the analysis below to learn more.