After rolling blackouts left thousands in the dark and without heat during a bitterly cold Christmas weekend, Duke Energy is now facing questions about why customers weren't notified ahead of time about the potential for outages.

It was an unusual combination of widespread severe cold and high demand that led Duke Energy to cut power for around half a million customers. However, some people living in the Triangle say an unplanned outage in that kind of severe cold was unacceptable.

Other WRAL Top Stories

One Chapel Hill resident wrote on Twitter, "Twenty-four hours without power ... my portable generator is just barely hanging in there and keeping us from freezing. I know it's miserable for everyone involved, especially the crews working out there to get things fixed, but this is ridiculous."

Gov. Roy Cooper voiced his concerns on Monday, asking for a complete report from Duke Energy about what went wrong – and what changes could be made for the future.

"Duke Energy assures me NC is in the clear now. But I’m deeply concerned about people who lost power and who didn’t get notice about rotating outages," shared Cooper on his Twitter.

Was Duke Energy's severe weather plan strong enough?

Over the weekend, Duke Energy asked customers to limit electricity use overnight to prevent additional blackouts as temperatures dropped into the teens three nights in a row.

With extreme cold temperatures forecast well in advance, WRAL News asked Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks if he felt the utility's severe weather plan was robust enough and why things happened the way they did.

"I think we felt like going into the event, that we had adequate resources to serve customer needs. We saw those conditions change a little bit over the night going into Saturday and had to make some difficult decisions to protect the grid," said Brooks.

Under normal circumstances, Duke is usually able to get backup power from other utilities nearby, but widespread cold across the South and blizzard conditions to the north meant those others did not have the help to give, according to Brooks.

"The challenge came in when we lost some generation and had challenges bringing any other generation from around the region," Brooks said.

Brooks said this combination of factors was very rare – saying it was a once-in-15-year event for him.

Duke Energy says they're going to continue to invest in making the grid more resilient against severe weather.

The company apologized for the need to use rolling outages.

"We’ll just have to look at what learnings there are to further improve that process," said Brooks.

Here are a few ways you can conserve energy:

  • Set your thermostat to 68 degrees or lower
    • Turn off lights that don't need to be on
      • Avoid using large appliances, such as dryers and dishwashers