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Power grid expert: 'Clearly something wrong' with Duke need for rolling blackouts

Duke Energy's decision to resort to rolling blackouts on Christmas Eve is a signal something was wrong with the utility's cold weather plan, a researcher who studies the power grid said.

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By
Joe Fisher
, WRAL reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — Duke Energy's decision to resort to rolling blackouts on Christmas Eve is a signal something was wrong with the utility's cold weather plan, a researcher who studies the power grid said.

Liza Reed is electricity transmission research manager with the Niskanen Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that looks at ways to make the power grid more reliable and resilient.

She called the recent blackouts in North Carolina "extreme" and "a different kind of scary" when customers are left in the cold.

In interviews with WRAL News, Jeff Brooks, a Duke Energy spokesman, said that colder than forecast temperatures and a surge in demand across the south left the utility without options.

"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 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.

The company apologized for the need to use rolling outages.

Reed is not convinced.

“The generation not performing is a real problem for utilities. ... There is certainly a question about investigating that supply. Like, what was going on with those power plants," she wonders.

Sen. Mike Woodard (D-22) said he'll be asking Duke Energy leaders those questions on behalf of his constituents. State utility regulators have asked Duke Energy to report on what went wrong at a meeting next Tuesday.

"We are going to have more times like this," Woodard said. "How are they prepared?”

As the population of North Carolina grows, he pointed out, the demand will as well.

"Capacity has to increase,” he said.

Reed said too much dependence on one source of power can be a problem.

"There’s a question about winterizing plants and diversifying supply. Are we relying too much on a single fuel source, for example, or a single fuel type,” she asks.

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