Category: Power Outages

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How Is the Major Heatwave Affecting the US Power Grid?

NERC-2024-Summer-Assessment

With the rising temperatures across most of the US and many cities experiencing over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, stresses the overall electric power grid. Power utilities are experiencing summer peaks in larger electric load demand by keeping up with consumers’ air conditioning units running around the clock.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), one of the nation’s largest utilities, provides electricity across a 7-state region (80,000 square miles) in the Southeast for over 10 million users. TVA has a total generation capacity of 32 gigawatts (GW) with the option to purchase and wheel additional GWs to customers from neighboring utilities. In the past, TVA has experienced winter peak load demands that created system disturbances that resulted in temporary and very short rolling blackouts in some cities/areas to maintain power grid reliability. Temporary load shedding outages were necessary for balancing the system generation capacity with the excessive peak load demand by ultimately protecting the integrity of its entire electric network. Continue Reading…

Moving forward, TVA has spent millions in power grid improvements and efficiency upgrades to support increases in future peak load demand. TVA’s integrated resource plan (IRP) will focus on continued grid improvements with plans to add up to 10 GWs of solar renewable power generation by 2035. Continue Reading…

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released its “2024 Summer Reliability Assessment, “ May 2024, detailing and “identifying areas of concern” for the nations North American power grid during extreme summer conditions. NERC named power regions/entities that may experience power generation capacity shortages during summer peak load demands. Continue Reading…

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XCEL Energy Is Saying “No More” to Fossil Fuel Generation by 2030!

XCEL-Energy-Coal-Pwr-Reduction
UtilityDive.com / Wikimedia

By UtilityDive.com – Will the power utility, XCEL Energy, have enough power generation capacity by 2030 in time to abolish all of its coal-fired generating plants? Energy regulators are very doubtful that XCEL Energy can achieve this vigorous goal in replenishing enough clean power to offset their reduction in carbon emissions. The fear is: will XCEL approach a power generation shortfall over the next decade to its electric load demand?

“The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission on Jan. 4 asked Xcel Energy to reconsider shuttering its Sherco and King coal-fired power plants, writing that their premature closure adds to the uncertainty of electric generation resource adequacy in the upper Midwest.”

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TVA Is Better Prepared by Running Their Natural Gas Units During This Artic Blast!

TVA-Artic-Blast-2024

Chattanooga Times Free Press – Since the year end of 2022, Winter Storm Elliott buckled TVA’s Power Grid forcing them to cycle temporary power blackouts across the Tennessee Valley Region. The region has not seen rolling blackouts by TVA since “its 90-year history.” After experiencing these power shortages, TVA has had over a year to prepare for another frigid winter artic blast like the one that is challenging the region now by average temperatures dropping as low as the teens and the wind chill into the single digits.

TVA is better prepared this winter with recent generation upgrades and improvement projects, including running several natural gas units as peak shavers during this artic blast.
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Power Regulators Warning Power Grids Vulnerable This Winter

Winter-Power-Outages
Photo by Insaug.com

A recent NPR article warns that much of the nation’s power grid is vulnerable to the winter threat approaching with major winter storms that could cause power outages and power shortages potentially affecting over 60% of US and Canada.

“North America’s power grid is vulnerable…People living in Southwestern states are at particular risk.”

(Continue Reading at NPR.org…)

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Power Plant Retirements Are Affecting Grid Reliability!

Grid-Reliability
Photo from Utility Dive / Sean Gallup / Getty Images

With the increases in power generation retirements in both coal powered and nuclear energy plants, presents major reliability concerns to the electric infrastructure. There is over “83 GW of fossil fuel and nuclear generation” in planned retirements over the next decade that could wreak havoc on the nations power system.

NERC indicated in their “Long-Term Reliability Assessment” that this “creates blackout risks for most of the United States.”

(Continue Reading at Utility Dive…)

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Two 230kV Power Delivery Substations in NC Damaged by Gunfire

NC-Substations

By MarketWatch:

A criminal act is being investigated by the local authorities and the FBI that caused major substation damage to its power transformers and other equipment. This criminal act occurred sometime on Saturday night, Dec 3, 2022, in Moore County, NC.

The repairs could take weeks while several customers will remain without power. Crews will be working around the clock in order to replace the damaged equipment and to restore the power outages.

“Andrew Wilkins, a conservation advocate who grew up in Moore County, was driving Saturday night from Washington to his parents’ small farm in Whispering Pines when he noticed all the street lights were out in the county seat of Carthage. He arrived to a ‘pitch black street’ and little information about the cause or scope of the blackout. ‘When the power was cut, the flow of information was cut too.’ ”

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