WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - Tuesday afternoon, Southwest Power Pool (SPP) reported being down to its lowest alert level. But that could change drastically in the next 36 to 48 hours if electricity use spikes and power supply isn’t there to meet customers’ demand. SPP, responsible for directing power to utility providers across 14 states reported going from their lowest to highest alert level in a matter of hours on Tuesday. It says that could happen again. The forecast calls for temperatures to remain well below freezing until Friday. With that comes the possibility for more rolling blackouts as part of the effort to ease the strain on the system.
Wichita resident Patrice Fields is among those impacted. Tuesday afternoon, she reported that her power had been on and off Monday and Tuesday as the power grid deals with planned and unplanned interruptions to service during the extreme cold.
“Was off for about five hours and then it came back on and then it went off again, and it came on and then this morning, it went off for a couple of hours,” Fields said.
Every said Tuesday that there were about 270,000 customers without power at some point in the day. In an about on the company’s Facebook page at about 4:30 p.m., Evergy said it was down to about 5,000 outages.
“We greatly appreciate you and we greatly appreciate the people who power our region. We’re still asking that you conserve energy as much as possible so we can get through this together,” Every said.
With its online outage reporting currently unavailable, Every said, “please call 888-544-4852 (if you’re in Missouri or Kansas Metro) or 800-544-4857 (if you’re a Kansas Central customer) to report an outage.”
The controlled outages are at the discretion of SPP.
“(We are) very much trying to avoid getting in a situation where Southwest Power Pool has a larger, longer uncontrolled outage or a blackout,” said Every Senior Vice President of Marketing and Public Affairs Chuck Caisley.
Evergy said several factors are in play. The cold temperatures are driving up electricity use, while some power plants in Oklahoma and Iowa are down. So, even though Evergy said it’s producing enough energy for its customers, being part of the larger SPP network means it has to do its part to balance out the system.
“(With a) system that big, if there’s a problem in one place, there could be a problem that impacts us everywhere, and that’s what we’re dealing with today,” Caisley said on Tuesday.
Evergy said it knows one of the biggest frustrations for customers is not being notified before a rolling blackout happens.
“The short and simple answer is, from a practical perspective, it’s almost impossible to tell customers where and when an outage like this is going to occur,” Caisley said. “The reason for that is we get very, very little notice.”
Evergy said one group of customers it specifically tries to alert when a rolling blackout is a possibility are those who have identified to the company that they have a medical condition. Evergy said it tries to avoid places that are classified as critical infrastructure, including hospitals, places with a COVID-19 vaccine and pumping stations for natural gas. But that’s not always avoidable. When outages are called for that include such critical locations, Evergy said it spreads them out throughout the service area and if the rolling blackout becomes needed again, the goal is to keep them from lasting more than 60 to 90 minutes.
Tuesday morning into afternoon, multiple homes and businesses were without power for several hours in the Wichita area. Some problems were unrelated to the rolling blackouts. On one of the coldest days in decades, some Kansans lost electricity for more than six hours with more than 100,000 customers reporting outages. Evergy confirmed some of those customers lost power due to equipment failure as subzero temperatures Tuesday morning created more than one challenge for energy companies.
Multiple homeowners and businesses near Harry and Rock Road in southeast Wichita were among those that went several hours without power, even after Evergy suspended the rolling blackouts.
Kansans are working together, bundling up and preparing for the possibility of another power outage in the next couple of days before we could again see temperatures above freezing.
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