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LINCOLN, Nebraska (KOLN) – Thousands of Nebraskans woke up this morning without power, with both LES and NPPD being required to perform spinning blackouts. It comes as the central United States experiences extreme cold and many states struggle to keep up with demands.
The outages occurred across the city and Nebraska between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m.
Rick Batten, a Denton resident, was among those affected. He was hit with not one, but two ongoing blackouts 15 minutes apart.
“Our house went down to 60 degrees,” Batten said. “My wife and I sat by the fire and I had managed to make coffee so we drank coffee and everyone read the news and that’s how we spent our morning.
He is not alone. 44,000 ERP customers and an unknown number of NPPD customers were without power for 30 to 60 minutes. The companies said the decision was beyond their control.
“We don’t yet know why this happened, but what we did know was that we were required by regulatory requirements to do this and if we didn’t we would face penalties,” said Kevin Wailes, CEO of LES.
The call was made by the Southwest Power Pool, which is responsible for maintaining the reliability of the power grid in most of the central United States, including Nebraska.
“We were all producing more energy than we were using,” Wailes said. “But the rest of the footprint had issues with fuel, cold weather.”
Tom Kent, CEO and Chairman of the NPPD, said if action was not taken, there could have been an uncontrolled widespread blackout.
The NPPD and LES said they were working to make sure customers were given as much warning as possible, but since it was an emergency, there was little they could do.
“It was an unusual cold snap,” Kent said. “I know everyone would have really liked to know when this was going to happen with them, I know my wife wanted to know when it was going to happen with us, but there is no way to know.
Kent and Wailes said companies are working to keep power going in places like hospitals, prisons and 911 call centers. They also said they were optimistic there will be no more. interruptions, but there is no guarantee.
As to how this might impact ERP bills, Wailes said when customers use more electricity to heat their homes their bills will go up, but he said ERP can’t go up. rates without a vote of the LES Board of Directors and Lincoln City Council.
Customers like Batten have said that while it’s impractical to have a power outage, a minor outage like the one he suffered is better than what happens in Texas, where he has relatives.
“They’ve been without power for 36 hours and it’s 40 degrees in their home,” Batten said. “So I think whatever we can do to reduce and share the power is what everyone should be doing.”
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