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 ...
How is that transition to green energy going?
“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.”
I thought this only happened in Texas?
Didn’t have this problem when the coal plants were up and running.
Those solar farms are proving once again their worthlessness
Freezing temperatures? It was 7 degrees that morning. NCers aren’t prepared for that kind of cold. Everyone cranked their heat to high at the same time and the power went out.
Got two texts from Duke over the holidays asking us to cut our power use. I replied, told them to stick it...and build more coal and nuke generating plants.
Duke Enema was surprised by winter.
Go figure.
Mayo and Roxboro plants ARE coal fired. Dan River used to be, but the 1948 vintage coal plant was demolished five years ago and they built a the Dan River Combined-Cycle Station (natural gas) on the same site. Mayo and Roxboro are indoor plants that normally don’t suffer from freezing weather. The problems were probably in the outdoor coal handling areas.
What I don’t get is Duke knows how to run in cold weather and has done so for 100 years.
The power industry has been brow-beaten, excoriated and besmirched by radical greens for decades now and, as a result, engineers just do not want to work in the power industry. If they do, they want to build windmills, solar cells, and batteries. The average age of workers in coal plants is really old. The vast well of experience operating the plants is drying up.
I think the loss of expertise may be what’s at work here.
Electric heat I presume?
Whatever it is, it’s affected TVA too. We had rolling blackouts during the freeze when we never had that before. During heavy ice storms yes, but just cold, never.
Whatever it is, it’s systematic.
Yes, you’re right. This was the first time we ever had rolling blackouts with TVA.
Really it seems that after California, Texas (last year), Tennessee and North Carolina (this year) a pattern is emerging that suggests rolling blackouts are intentional.
Perhaps it’s to get us used to the idea of sometimes not having electricity. You could say use a natural gas furnace or fireplace, but those are also being phased out in some places.
You will own nothing and be happy and cold.
“How is that transition to green energy going?”
Driving along at warp speed having been mandated by the uniparty — the Republican legislature has caved to the Democrat governor, reaching a deal on an energy bill shifting the state’s electrical supply to “renewables”. More proof that voting Republican will not save you from tyranny.
From the article: “North Carolina’s Democratic governor and its Republican-controlled Legislature have reached a deal on a sweeping energy bill that could dramatically boost renewable electricity in the state.
The bipartisan-backed legislation, years in the making, is designed to slash the Tar Heel State’s carbon emissions 70 percent by 2030 en route to reaching a 2050 net-zero goal.”
During the cold spell in Clark County Ohio, the power was “cycled?” This caused my daughters circuit board on her new kitchen range to malfunction. Boards are on back order No recourse
Duke and others in Indiana put out conservation requests. Supposedly we did so well we avoided rolling blackouts. IT’S INDIANA FOR CRYIN’OUT LOUD. ITS GOING TO GET COLD! As it is also going to get hot in summer. Both of which it’s done since your company and any predecessor companies existed. What is going on here?
“Systematic” — yes. As I wrote, we are short good power engineers and operators because the radical greens have hated on the power industry for decades. People no longer go into the power business for the same reason they won’t go into the military.
The effect is hidden in the power business, but it is out in the open for the military.
intentional
But you’ll feel better using less evil carbon /s
Rolling blackouts?
They’re getting instruction from California - we’ve been putting up with them for years.
Wonderful to have the power go down when it’s 105 degrees outside.
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