Poplar Preparedness put up the video.
The New-Normaling of Blackouts
To be very clear: rolling blackouts are not now, nor have they been, normal in the US. Therefore, having to expect rolling blackouts going forward would be abnormal. Nevertheless, as utility providers and power grid monitors have recently warned, the more grids are saddled with intermittent, unreliable wind and solar facilities, the more unreliable they are becoming. They’re more prone to capacity shortfalls and blackouts.
Duke spokesman Jeff Brooks did not have details on which units failed to respond.
“We did have some reduced power generating capacity, and were challenged in our ability to secure additional power from outside of our service area due to all utilities in the region dealing with similar challenges from the extreme cold,” said Brooks.
NC Utility Commission attorneys who represent energy consumers, known as the Public Staff, confirmed that multiple generating units were offline or not responding at the time of the outages. They did not have details on the exact number of units affected or what percentage of Duke’s generating capacity they represented.
Duke Energy told regulators it had a plan to keep customers informed if rolling blackouts were needed. They even had social media posts ready. But there was no advance notice to customers before the outages started.
Energy utility expert Liza Reed, a research analyst with the nonprofit Niskanen Center, says that probably means Duke Energy was caught off-guard, too, and needed to move quickly to avoid a much worse outcome.
Duke Energy could reimburse customers for losses related to recent rolling blackouts
Power companies are protected under the law from outages that are out of their control.
However, last week, Duke Energy turned the power off intentionally before the “Act of God” could occur.
That decision could be a major difference for many families who were left in the cold.
Duke Energy said it turned people’s power off to avoid a bigger catastrophe from last week’s cold blast.
But for families who rely on that power for medical equipment and survival, that explanation isn’t cutting it.
Duke Energy customer Stacy Staggs’ daughter has medical equipment that requires battery power to run.
She said there wasn’t any communication about the blackouts.
“So we didn’t know the power was coming back on,” Staggs said.
And because families didn’t know, they had to make expensive, split-second decisions because lives were depending on it.
“I feel like Duke should get all of those bills,” Staggs said.
Carter learned Duke Energy is going to look at customers’ bills and decide whether to pay any of them.
A spokesperson said customers can submit a liability claim for an evaluation online.
There are supposed to be different protocols for customers with medical needs.
Duke Energy has a Medically Essential Program, which is aimed at giving advanced notifications for service interruptions.
Duke Energy confirms some power plants ‘unavailable’ during Christmas Eve blackouts
There have been reports that has many as six plants may have had planned or unplanned outages in specific generating units that day. Those were Dan River combined cycle plant, the Lee combined cycle plant, Marshall Unit 1 coal plant, Mayo coal plant, Robinson nuclear Unit 2 and Roxboro Coal Unit 4…
“It’s very strange Duke would have ramped down their gas so much in the middle of rolling blackouts, unless one or more of their gas units failed,” CCEBA says in its assessment of what happened on Christmas Eve.
From a year ago: Duke Energy Reaches $1.1B Deal to Resolve North Carolina Coal Ash Cost Issues
Duke Energy is aggressively pursuing net-zero carbon emissions ambitions. So far, it has announced plans to retire all its coal-only units in North Carolina and South Carolina by 2030. Since 2010, it has already retired 50 coal units—a combined capacity of 6.5 GW.
The utility’s 10-year capital plan will require substantial near-term investment, but it will provide for a doubling of its enterprise-wide renewable portfolio from 8 GW to 16 GW by 2025 and bring its regulated renewable capacity to 50 GW by 2050. It will also add more than 11 GW of energy storage across its system by 2050.
In October, the company said its current five-year capital plan will increase by about $2 billion to approximately $58 billion. And beyond that, Duke Energy’s 2025 to 2029 capital plan will be in the range of $65 billion to $75 billion. However, officials said that to keep customer bills affordable, the company will mitigate these capital increases by reducing other costs.
Duke Energy said no solar energy was available Christmas Eve when rolling blackouts started — plunging 500,000 customers into the dark for hours during sub-freezing temperatures. Friday’s order from the Utilities Commission directed Duke Energy to conduct by 2024 two more competitive procurements for solar generation that will come online by 2028.
Duke Energy sells Google Themostats and then uses them to control the temps in our home. We had to remove it to stop the intrusion. We would erase their programming and every week it would come back. We put back in manual controls.
Duke has dragged their feet on new renewable sources and replaced coal with gas turbines. It was these that failed to fire up during peak demand.
In 2011 Duke of Charlotte and Progress Energy of Raleigh agreed to merge. The deal stipulated that Progress CEO Bill Johnson was to replace Duke CEO Jim Rogers. But in June 2012, on the day that the deal closed, the board fired Johnson and re-hired Rogers instead. North Carolina regulators, following an investigation, reached an agreement with Duke in which the company was required to choose a new CEO by the middle of 2013. Good was selected by a board composed of both Duke and Progress members.[2] Lynn Good became CEO of Duke Energy on July 1, 2013.[2] Good was also elected to the Duke board. In 2016, she was elected chairman of the board. In 2018, Duke Energy awarded Good just under $14 million in total compensation.[5]
Good is one of the most highly compensated women executives in the United States.
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