WECC 11/13/25 Wyoming Disturbance Review

[MVAR]

Thought people like @OVERKILL would be interested in this.

The November 13, 2025, Wyoming grid disturbance triggered a cascading series of line outages that formed an electrical island, causing a rapid system frequency drop to 59.75 Hz. The event resulted in the loss of nearly 5 gigawatts of generation and cut power to approximately 250,000 customers across northeastern Wyoming and South Dakota. Stated island collapsed after about 6 seconds. Coal generating unit was also motored & destroyed during this excursion.

Here is the NERC report for the above stated cascading outage:

https://www.wecc.org/wecc-document/28226

Webinar posted to YT presented by WECC:

 

[melk]

The power grid is truly interesting in how it all works together. Lots of surprises the more you learn about it.

 

[loneryder]

Not related but when I drive through northern Va and see all those huge data centers, I can't help but think what a small EMP would do to them. They would be worthless. Couldn't be rebuilt or replaced in a timely manner.

 

[DCDG]

wouldn't take much for a bad actor to easily take out the country's power grid.

 

[MVAR]

wouldn't take much for a bad actor to easily take out the country's power grid.

There's multiple grids between Northern MX, US & Canada. Western (referenced in video), Eastern & Texas. They are only tied together through DC, not AC.

 

[Rand]

Thank you for linking the report it was an interesting read.