Duke Energy prepares for cold snap, increased demand on power grid

As cold air moves into central and eastern North Carolina, Duke Energy said it's prepared to meet the increased demand.

Jeff Brooks with Duke Energy said the company sees the highest demand in the winter. He said they’ve learned a lot from a cold blast in 2022, where millions were without power.

Now, their preparation starts with anticipating the high demand during lower temperatures. Lows will be in the 20s and even teens at points during the coming days.

"We work to complete all of our maintenance at our plants by early December," he said. "We also work with neighboring utilities to purchase power when we need it."

That tactic backfired in 2022 when those companies had issues of their own. However, he says the updated forecasting models have continual improvement, thus making them more accurate. That allows them to better estimate customer demand.

"Our forecasting model learns from every event it experiences. Immediately after the event, we updated the forecast model with conditions experienced to refine and improve our forecasting accuracy," Brooks said. "We put a lot of data into our forecast, not only from our own experiences, but some experiences from our peers."

While rare, he said rolling blackouts are a way to conserve energy.

"In the event that we reached a point where we couldn’t import enough power to meet customer energy needs, then we might issue an appeal to customers to reduce their energy use," he said.

Brooks also said the company improved the performance of its outage rotation software to help ensure the system performs as expected, should the need arise to conduct rotating outages again.

At this point, Brooks says they are not asking customers to conserve energy. However, if that does happen, Brooks says they have changed their conservation messaging to be similar to storm outage alerts. Those updates would be sent via text, email or phone.

The state emergency management office said people should be prepared.

"When we see winter weather, even without precipitation, where we’ve got a cold snap like we’re going to experience this week, we could see power outages in different areas because of the strain that’s placed on the infrastructure," said Justin Graney, the chief of external affairs and communications.

He said now is the time to get an emergency kit together.

"That can include nonperishable food for up to three to seven days, battery-powered radios that you can obtain weather information, cell phone with a charger, a first aid kit, medications, blankets, sleeping bags, warm clothing," Graney said.