Posted on 01/06/2023 6:29:36 AM PST by MtnClimber
Talk about making friends and influencing people. Duke Energy, one of the main power providers for the Carolinas, really stepped in it over the Christmas weekend. For the first time in the energy company’s history, they were forced to institute rolling blackouts and beg their customers to conserve power…in the middle of a ferocious winter storm on Christmas Eve.
For the first time in the company’s history, Duke Energy enacted rolling blackouts on Christmas Eve amid freezing temperatures. The move left half a million customers without power. And on Tuesday, the company issued an apology, attributing several compounding factors as its reasoning.
“I want to express how sorry we are for what our customers experienced. We own what happened,” said Julie Janson, executive vice president and CEO for Duke Energy Carolinas. “Making rotating outages [was] necessary to protect the integrity of the grid and mitigate the risk of serious failure affecting a far greater number of customers for longer time frames.”
…Equipment failure due to severe cold and inaccurate modeling contributed to the outages. Duke said there was extremely high demand and not enough supply of power.
Three of Duke’s power plants — Dan River, Mayo and Roxboro — had to cut its operations in half because instrumentation lines froze, causing Duke to lose 1,300 megawatts of power. This happened despite these lines having weatherization measures.
It turns out the best-laid plans gang aft a-gley when the folks you’ve contracted with to back you up are experiencing the same winter storm and, more importantly, are in the same lousy shape.
…Duke tried to increase its supply by buying power from nearby utility providers, like PJM Interconnection. However, PJM and other companies were having similar problems because of the cold, so that power never came through.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
More like, ‘Sorry. Not Sorry.’
They don’t care. Who holds them accountable? Government at ANY level? Not that I’ve ever seen.
What choice do we have? It’s not like we can buy energy from anywhere other than where we live...
Tale as old as time.
Successful business use high performers from Operations and Production who are experts in the company’s products and services, and know their customers, as Line Mangers, Profit and Loss (P/L) Managers, and Corporate Leaders.
nascarnation used the Southwest Airlines fiasco as an example. Contrast with Eddie Rickenbacker at Eastern Airlines.
Go to the website of any publicly traded company you might be interested in investing in, and click on the link to “Our Leadership.”
Count the number of MBAs, Accountants, and Lawyers, assigning -1 point for each.
Count the number of Engineers, Scientists, Technical, and Product experts. Recognize that some of the latter obtained graduate degrees in Business, Law, and Accounting for protective coloration and to advance their careers. Assign +1 point for each.
Count the number people with degrees in Human Resources, the Social Sciences, Education, and anything else that smacks of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality (DIE). Assign -5 points for each.
Total up the scores and use them to rank order your candidate companies for investment. Your results will be a far more accurate predictor of future performance than anything Morningstar or any other conventional stock rating service can provide.
If you are invested in a successful company, and there is an influx of MBAs, Lawyers, Accountants, and DIE advocates among corporate leadership, particularly if triggered by a liquidity event, it’s time to sell.
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