The Southwest Power Pool has ordered that electricity services in 14 states be controlled to break down the electricity service because the demand for power in the region, driven upwards by the bitter cold, overwhelms the available generation, hampered by the storm.
“This is an unprecedented event and is the first time that SPP has ever had to call for controlled service interruptions,” said Lanny Nickell, chief operating officer of the power pool, in a statement. “It’s a last resort we understand, a burden on our companies and the customers they serve, but it’s a step we are consciously taking to prevent conditions from getting worse.”
Most interruptions last about an hour and will reduce power to several thousand customers at a time. It is necessary to limit demand and ‘protect the reliability of the regional network’, Nickell said. About 6,000 customers started in Oklahoma shortly thereafter.
The power pool, based in Little Rock, Ark., Manages the electrical grid that supplies electricity networks throughout Oklahoma and Kansas and parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska , connected. and New Mexico. Most of the region was affected by the winter storm or by the icy Arctic air mass that drove the storm south.
The statement reads that the power pool was forced to start relying on the reserve energy sources at 08:08 Central Time on Monday, and that it issued the controlled interruption order when the reserves were depleted a few hours later. It is said that since February 9, it has gradually intensified the warnings to save power.
The statement reads that each member company decides for itself how, where and when to discontinue power to customers to achieve the necessary reduction.
Utilities that are part of the main network industry in Texas, which joins the Southwest Power Pool, began imposing rolling interruptions overnight due to the storm.