Grid Alerts Before the Power Goes: What ERCOT, CAISO, PJM, and MISO Actually Tell You, and What to Do for Your Pets in Each Window

A staged grid alert means the grid operator sees reserves getting thin. It does not mean your power is out. ERCOT, CAISO, PJM, and MISO each publish staged public alerts before a shortage becomes an outage, and every stage describes reserves on the grid, not power at your house. If a push alert or headline used the words “energy emergency” or “conservation appeal,” your lights are almost certainly still on. Use that window to charge backup power, gather pet medication, and confirm a place to go.

Two things are easy to mix up. A Conservation Appeal is not an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA). A Flex Alert does not mean a rolling blackout is coming. Each is its own product with its own trigger.

A grid alert is not the other power-outage situations

A staged grid alert is not an active outage. It is not a weeks-long restoration after the grid has failed (see our weeks-long outage pet plan), and it is not a utility deliberately de-energizing your lines for fire-weather reasons (see our PSPS pet countdown protocol). Our power-outage hub names all of these situations. This page covers the one that starts before the power goes.

Find out which alert system covers you

Each of four grid operators covers a different footprint. A threshold from the wrong operator says nothing about your risk.

• ERCOT is the grid operator for the ERCOT Interconnection, which NERC’s winter assessment describes as located entirely in Texas.
• CAISO, the California Independent System Operator, issues the California alerts described below.
• PJM coordinates the grid across, in its own words, “Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.”
• MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, says it operates “across 15 states and the Canadian province of Manitoba.”

These four footprints do not add up to the whole country, and this page does not describe a nationwide grid-alert system. If you are not sure which operator covers you, or whether one does, check your own utility’s outage or emergency-alert page.

Texas: ERCOT’s four stages

ERCOT publishes a Conservation Appeal and then three escalating EEA levels. They have four separate thresholds, and the pet action changes at each. As of September 29, 2026, ERCOT’s pages described them as follows.

Conservation Appeal: the earliest, voluntary stage

ERCOT describes a Conservation Appeal as an elevated request for Texans to reduce energy use on peak-demand days when reserves are lower and emergency operations are possible. It is issued when demand approaches available supply, and the recommended action is to “reduce electric use, if safe to do so.” ERCOT’s page also says the appeal is only a voluntary request, and that anyone with medical needs should contact their local electric utility and have a backup plan in case controlled outages are needed later.

No emergency has been declared at this stage. It is the cheapest window to act in.

Pet action: charge your portable power station, top off a battery-backup aquarium air pump, and pre-cool or pre-heat the room where your temperature-sensitive pet spends the most time. Our pet power budget page has the runtime math for an aquarium heater, a reptile heat source, or a mini fridge holding pet medication. Our portable power stations for pets guide compares five stations on that basis.

EEA 1: the first declared emergency level

ERCOT declares an EEA 1 when operating reserves drop below 2,500 MW and are expected to stay below that level for at least 30 minutes. Its instruction is “Please safely reduce electric use during an EEA 1.” ERCOT’s energy-saving tips for this window include changing the thermostat a degree or two, turning off extra lights, and not running large appliances such as washers, dryers and dishwashers.

ERCOT has moved from asking to declaring, but an EEA 1 is not a promise of an outage.

Pet action: finish any charging you started at the Conservation Appeal. If you have a generator for a pet-dependent device, confirm it has fuel. Reread the caution on our generator sizing for pet loads page: a powered medical device should not run off a generator unless your veterinarian and the device’s manufacturer have signed off.

EEA 2: reserves not recovering, demand response engaged

ERCOT declares an EEA 2 when reserves have dropped below 2,000 MW and are not expected to recover within 30 minutes, or when frequency drops below 59.91 Hz for 15 minutes. ERCOT says “entering emergency operations does not mean that ERCOT is expecting to call for controlled power outages.” At this stage it describes activating all available generation, releasing remaining reserves, coordinating with other grid operators for out-of-state generation, and “using demand response to lower electric demand.”

ERCOT’s page lists demand response among ERCOT’s own grid actions and does not say what resources it calls on. It does not describe your utility adjusting your smart thermostat. This page does not cover residential demand-response programs; ask your own utility whether it offers one.

Pet action: consolidate any refrigerated pet medication so it is ready to move if the fridge loses power. Confirm a backup destination for a heat- or cold-sensitive pet if your home cannot hold temperature without power. Finish anything left on your list. The EEA 2 trigger is reserves not expected to recover within 30 minutes.

EEA 3: reserves critically low, controlled outages directed

ERCOT declares an EEA 3 when reserves drop below 1,500 MW, or when frequency drops below 59.8 Hz for any period of time. At this level ERCOT says it will direct transmission operators to reduce power through “controlled outages, which impact all customer classes, including residential, commercial, and industrial.” ERCOT’s page frames these as a last-resort measure to prevent a wider, uncontrolled failure.

Pet action: treat outages as imminent, not merely possible. Finish anything still undone rather than waiting for the power to go.

California: CAISO’s Flex Alert and EEA levels

CAISO’s ladder is structured differently. Its Emergency Notifications Fact Sheet (marked CommPR/08.2023) defines each level as follows. The fact sheet says CAISO moved to notifications that match the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) EEA system, so these levels sit inside the same NERC framework as ERCOT’s.

CAISO level	What CAISO’s fact sheet says
EEA Watch	All available resources are committed or forecast to be in use, and energy deficiencies are expected. It can be issued the day before a projected shortfall or after a sudden event. Consumers are encouraged to conserve.
EEA 1	Real-time analysis shows all resources in use or committed, and energy deficiencies are expected. Consumers are encouraged to conserve.
EEA 2	The ISO requests emergency energy from all resources and has activated emergency energy programs. Consumers are urged to conserve to help preserve grid reliability.
EEA 3, preparing for rotating outages	The operator cannot meet minimum reliability reserve requirements and has declared the initial step of an EEA 3. Utilities are alerted to prepare, but rotating outages have not been ordered.
EEA 3, ordering rotating outages	The operator has ordered utilities to begin rotating outages because supply is not sufficient to meet demand and required reserves cannot be maintained.

A Flex Alert sits alongside this ladder rather than inside it. CAISO defines it as “a call to consumers to voluntarily conserve electricity when the ISO anticipates energy supply may not meet high electricity demand.” The fact sheet says reducing use during one can prevent more dire measures, including EEA notifications, emergency procedures and rotating outages. As of September 29, 2026, flexalert.org recommended: “Set AC to 78 or higher, if health permits”. That setpoint changes over time, so check the site for the current figure.

Pet action: use the same staged approach as for ERCOT. Treat a Flex Alert like a Conservation Appeal, an EEA Watch or EEA 1 like ERCOT’s EEA 1, EEA 2 like ERCOT’s EEA 2, and either step of an EEA 3 like ERCOT’s EEA 3.

PJM and MISO: Winter Storm Fern, January 2026

Staged alerts are not only a Texas and California matter. Winter Storm Fern in late January 2026 produced them in the PJM and MISO footprints.

PJM

PJM’s January 24, 2026 filing to the U.S. Department of Energy says it issued an RTO-wide Cold Weather Alert effective 00:01 on January 24 through 23:59 on January 27, 2026, along with a Maintenance Outage Recall. It also issued a Cold Weather Advisory through January 30 and declared Conservative Operations from January 24 through January 27. The filing says PJM was projecting an all-time winter peak load of roughly 147,000 MW, and that it had been asked to provide emergency energy, in some cases up to 3,000 MW, to neighbors already in an EEA Level 2.

MISO

MISO was one of those neighbors: its report lists an emergency power purchase from PJM. MISO’s February 17, 2026 report to its Reliability Subcommittee says two Maximum Generation Events, Step 2c, were declared on January 24. That gave MISO access to generation emergency ranges, load-modifying resource curtailments, and emergency power purchases. Under its EEA 2 declaration MISO deployed about 2 GW of load-modifying resources in the North and Central regions, in addition to the self-scheduled amount, and made an emergency power purchase from PJM. A U.S. Department of Energy order about a separate Indiana generating station independently reports that MISO declared an EEA 1 and an EEA 2 “MaxGen” event for its North and Central Regions on January 24.

MISO’s Grid Conditions Explainer defines the ladder beneath those declarations:

• Conservative Operations: asks MISO members to defer, delay or recall non-essential maintenance.
• Maximum Generation Warning: alerts members that demand is increasing and operating reserves may become insufficient without operational action.
• EEA 1: declared when MISO can no longer meet projected demand and reserve requirements without intervention.
• EEA 2: takes effect as reserves keep declining and more action is needed to balance supply and demand.
• EEA 3: takes effect when supply and demand can no longer be balanced and power interruptions are imminent or already occurring.

MISO simplified its internal MaxGen steps effective June 1, 2026, to align them more clearly with NERC’s EEA levels. Confirm what each step means on MISO’s current page rather than relying on older step numbers.

Pet action (our suggested mapping, not one either operator publishes): in the PJM or MISO footprint, treat a Cold Weather Alert, a Conservative Operations declaration or a MaxGen Warning like a Conservation Appeal. Treat an EEA 1 as the first declared-emergency stage, and an EEA 2 or EEA 3 as the ERCOT and CAISO sections above describe.

Texas weatherization changes the odds, not the plan

NERC’s 2025-2026 Winter Reliability Assessment reports three separate things about ERCOT:

• ERCOT has conducted 2,028 generation and transmission service provider winter weatherization inspections since Winter 2021-2022.
• ERCOT’s probabilistic risk assessment shows a 2% probability of having to declare EEAs on the January forecast winter peak day, and a 1.8% probability of controlled load shed. ERCOT defines low-risk hours as those when the probability of an EEA is under 10%.
• Load growth from new data centers and other large industrial users is driving higher winter demand forecasts and contributing to continued risk of supply shortfalls.

NERC does not say that weatherization lowered the risk without removing it; that is our reading of these three findings. For a Texas household, the plan is neither “this cannot happen again” nor “this will happen again.” It is a low-probability, nonzero event that still justifies a charged power station and a stocked medication kit, as before 2021.

What this page does not cover

• Fire-weather shutoffs. If your own utility issues a Public Safety Power Shutoff notice, use our PSPS pet countdown protocol. It runs on the utility’s fire-weather decision, not a grid operator’s reserve math.
• Long outages. If restoration stretches past a few days once the power goes, use our weeks-long outage pet plan.
• Program enrollment. Whether your household or a pet’s medical equipment qualifies for a utility’s medical-baseline or priority-notification program is a question for your utility.