"Hunkered down in the PJM Interconnection operations center near Valley Forge, Pa., shift supervisor Brian Oakes waited for a distress call.

A mass of Arctic air was descending on the Eastern Seaboard, and Oakes would be the first to know if there was an emergency to tend to in the glowing map of power plants and transmission lines splayed before him.

The call never came.

Instead, PJM's grid — an intricate machine spanning 13 Eastern states and the District of Columbia — sped along without a hitch despite cratering temperatures that would eventually be blamed for more than two dozen deaths."

Hannah Northey and Peter Behr report for EnergyWire January 9, 2018. [2]