Tennessee Valley Authority Representative Speaks On Blackouts In December

Wednesday, January 25, 2023
by Jennifer Castillo-Gervasi

The Greeneville Energy Authority Board met Monday morning and a representative from the Tennessee Valley Authority gave a presentation on data collected regarding the blackouts on December 23rd and 24th 2022.

Some were upset due to the inconvenience the blackouts caused although most were understanding. TVA along with the Greeneville Energy Authority want to educate everyone and help all understand why there were blackouts to begin with and what actually happened.

Representative Chris Quillen explained there's a six step plan in place to prepare for unprecedented events like winter storm Elliot. The plan was placed in order to prevent losing stability of the grid system and having it fail. Utilities across the country have a similar plan Quillen said. Before TVA had to make the decision to start the blackout on December 23, efforts were made since midnight that day to prevent the grid system from exceeding its available generation. The unexpected cold front had everyone's heating systems working overtime to make up for the cold weather, which had an impact on the generation plants.

In order to keep the grid secure TVA had to curtail loads, which prompted, step 50. Quillen said this was the first time in his career that step 50 ever had to be enforced, which was to make calls to local power companies to curtail a percentage of their load whether that be 5%, 10% etc. He said thankfully step 60 was not needed which was the cut off delivery points anywhere from 20- 30% of a load in one block. Quillen said that would be much more difficult to recover from and that the weekend could have been worse, but TVA was prepared for this type of situation, just in case.

Tennessee was not the only one experiencing these issues. Quillen stated a lot of our neighbors dealt with the same issues that weekend and a lot of reserves were affected in the country. Over 60% of the US had Winter Weather and Wind Chill Alerts. 2/3 of the lower 48 states were affected with approximately a 2000-mile wide impact. Crews were working hard and went above and beyond like to keep things from getting frozen like using blow torches and keeping heat on sensors and control systems so the generator wouldn't be lost.

TVA along with Greeneville Light and Power would like to work on better ways to communicate with customers in the future if something like this was to happen again.