Buddy Hasten
UPDATE: Hopes for avoiding further rolling blackouts in a winter electric grid crisis crashed against reality in Arkansas as the state’s largest provider, Entergy Arkansas, and state electric cooperatives begin employing temporary, targeted outages.
Entergy, which serves more than 700,000 meters in the state, joined other utilities in responding to disaster mandates by two Little Rock-based grid managers, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Southwest Power Pool, to cut power-use peaks that were eclipsing supply.
The power companies and grid managers continue to battle high demand amid historic cold weather. Entergy, which is with MISO, shut down power in certain areas from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday. Other MISO members also resorted to cuts, including First Electric Cooperative of Jacksonville, which cut service in four outages of up to 40 minutes between 9:30 and 11:30 p.m. Other cooperatives employed outages across the state.
SWEPCO of Shreveport, an SPP member serving a swath of western Arkansas, had already been conducting blackouts in northwest Arkansas.
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Two of Arkansas’ leading electric utility executives told Little Rock Rotarians on Tuesday that the state is “not out of the woods yet” after limited cold-weather blackouts mandated in emergency orders by the two regional transmission organizations based in Little Rock, Southwest Power Pool and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.
The brutal cold and record demand for electric power during a multistate snowstorm cut off power to some customers of SPP-affiliated utilities in west and northwest Arkansas, and MISO utilities cut power to big industrial users with interruption capability written into their contracts, language that lets them reap lower rates, according to Arkansas Electric Cooperatives CEO Buddy Hasten and Entergy Arkansas Director of Resource Planning Kurt Castleberry.
“These customers allow their service to be interrupted,” Hasten said. “The state’s cooperatives are with SPP on the western side of the state and mostly with MISO to the east.
“This morning SPP notified us to start disconnecting co-op customers, but as we were going to our checklist, SPP rescinded that order,” Hasten continued. “So we went right to the edge of the cliff and stared into the precipice, but we didn’t have to cut anybody off.”
The cooperatives temporarily cut power to Nucor Steel in Blytheville while Entergy interrupted service to Big River Steel, also in Mississippi County. The two steel makers are among the state’s largest power users.
The cuts to big users and conservation by households answering the call reduced Entergy’s demand about 1,000 megawatts from a 5,000-Mw peak, Castleberry estimated, while Hasten figured the cooperatives had shaved 450 megawatts off a 3,000-Mw load.
At 12:31 p.m. Tuesday, SPP downgraded its energy emergency alert to Level 1, down from Level 3, and utilities were looking to restore all disconnected power in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
While MISO affiliates had fewer problems in Arkansas, MISO communications adviser Brandon Morris addressed prolonged forced outages in parts of Texas in this statement to Arkansas Business:
“The unprecedented weather event and high load demand created tight operating conditions including Forced Generation Outages and Transmission Constraints requiring MISO to continue the controlled outage directive for Southeast Texas through Tuesday, Feb. 16. Temporary power interruptions are always a last resort effort and necessary to maintain grid reliability, and most of the outages have been restored. MISO is under an emergency declaration and our neighbors are experiencing similar issues.”
Hasten and Castleberry, speaking at the weekly virtual meeting of the Rotary Club of Little Rock, said nominally warmer temperatures today should ease some of the demand pressure.
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