Image Credit: Tennessee Valley Authority / Facebook
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
Despite talks over the last few months about upgraded systems and rate increases for customers in an effort to “ensure the region has the energy it needs to meet growing demand”, the Tennessee Valley Authority proved unable to keep up with the state’s power demands during recent extreme winter conditions.
A new TVA record was set on Wednesday morning with a peak power demand of 34,526 megawatts with an average system temperature of only 4 degrees. The previous record was 33,482 megawatts in August 2007.
TVA was unable to keep up with that demand, leaving many East Tennessee residents without power as temperatures dove well below freezing.
Customers in Knox, Anderson, Sevier, and Blount Counties were among those affected by the outages.
TVA had asked customers to voluntarily conserve energy, particularly between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.
On the other end of the state, Memphis residents were assured that rumored rolling blackouts were not in the works, according to Memphis Light, Gas, and Water. While they did ask customers to conserve energy, the company says they have no plans to institute blackouts at this time.
A study released in November by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that Tennessee was one of the states with the highest risk of blackouts and an electricity shortage. Residents dealt with a similar issue in late 2022, suffering through rolling blackouts when extremely cold temperatures were more than the power grids could handle.
Former U.S. Congressman Jim Matheson, who now serves as CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, noted then that the state needs to go ahead and move forward with building new power plants to handle the increasing demands.
TVA and other utility companies are still asking customers to conserve energy as much as possible as the state continues to deal with below freezing conditions. Temperatures are expected to rise slightly above freezing on Thursday afternoon.
