Duke Energy to review rolling blackouts after thousands lost power amid bitter cold
During Christmas weekend, around 800,000 Duke Energy customers across the Carolinas lost power, often without advanced notice, due to rolling blackouts and damaged power lines as temperatures in Asheville reached an eight-year low of zero degrees.
Screenshots of Duke Energy's online outage map on Dec. 23 and 24 posted on Twitter by Duke Energy Grid Specialist Jeff Brooks indicated that around 5,000 customers near Asheville lost power due to wind-damaged power lines on Dec. 23 and around 40,000 lost power in rolling blackouts on Dec. 24. Those numbers could not be confirmed, as spokesperson Keith Richardson said Duke does not keep data county by county. The company only keeps data for its service areas, he said, that in this case cover large chunks of North and South Carolina.
Everyone had power back before Christmas morning, Richardson said, as around 6,000 crew members worked around the clock to fix wind-damaged power lines on Dec. 23 and 24.
"We are grateful to our customers for their patience and understanding. First to all who lost power from that initial storm and had to wait in the bitter cold. Second, to those who lost power during the emergency outages that followed and had to wait – sometimes longer than anticipated – for power to be restored. And finally, to all who generously delayed extra energy use during this critical period to help keep the lights on for others," Richardson said in an email.
Temperatures dropped to zero degrees on Dec. 24, making it the 20th coldest day on record in Asheville, recent Citizen Times reporting shows. Winds up to 42 mph made the wind chill dip into the minus 20s. The extreme weather was caused by a low pressure system dragging cold air quickly from Canada, which AP reporting shows has already claimed the lives of at least 34 people, primarily in New York.
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Duke Energy did not start letting people know about the rolling blackouts until 8 a.m. Dec. 24, hours after the blackouts had already started at 6 a.m., Richardson said. By 10 a.m., Duke had already begun restoring power outages, which he said took several hours.
"We were not able to communicate as proactively as we normally do, given the dynamic nature of the situation and fast-moving events. We will be evaluating this event to see what we can learn and apply to improve the process and serve the customer during extreme conditions," he said.
The company also did not have the average amount of time each type of outage lasted, according to Richardson, as it would be too difficult for the company "given the varying durations calculated by the number of households impacted throughout the state."
Power outages across the company's Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress service areas caused by high winds on Dec. 23 affected 300,000 people, while rolling blackouts on Dec. 24 caused by a lack of available power affected 500,000 people, according to Richardson.
Most of Western North Carolina sits in the Duke Energy Carolinas area. However, Richardson said Asheville is still served by Duke Energy Progress because it was served by Progress Energy before it merged with Duke Energy.
"To be honest, the nuances of DEP vs. DEC gets lost on regular folks, which is why we’ve been reporting the Carolinas," he said on Dec. 27.
Blackouts like these are rare, Richardson said, and will not happen every time it gets cold. The winter storm currently sweeping across the country made it hard for Duke to bring in additional power to meet its customers' needs, which were also higher due to the winter storm.
"This event affected utilities from Texas to the Northeast and through the Midwest, so our options were more limited for securing additional capacity out of state, as those utilities were dealing with similar situations as we were," he said.
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A Dec. 26 news release from Duke Energy said that the company had resumed normal operations as temperatures begin to rise.
Dominion Energy did not have any natural gas outages over the weekend, spokesperson Persida Montanez said.
Christian Smith is the general assignment reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Questions or comments? Contact him at RCSmith@gannett.com or 828-274-2222.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Duke Energy to review rolling blackouts after winter power outages
