The answer to about 9,800 city residents was “yes”, as the Moorhead Public Service temporarily disconnected some homes from the power grid as part of the “continuous blackouts” that occurred across much of the central and southern United States on Tuesday -market.
Controlled outages came in response to the exceptionally cold climate in many parts of the country, which put enormous pressure on the power grid and caused power outages in many communities in the United States, including Moorhead.
And with a cold front still dominating much of the central United States, one of the top grid operators in the upper Midwest told residents and utilities to prepare for the possibility of more blackouts on Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning, perhaps extending to Thursday.
Lynnette Wetch talks about the loss of electricity that her home in southern Moorhead experienced on Tuesday morning, February 16. Michael Vosburg / Forum Photo Editor
“It would have been nice if we had warned you in advance,” said Lynnette Wetch, a resident of southern Moorhead, whose power went down for about 20-30 minutes on Tuesday morning.
Jasmine Merkens, a resident of the same Moorhead neighborhood, echoed Wetch’s feelings.
“I wish I had been notified beforehand that something was going on,” said Merkens, adding that her power was probably off for less than 30 minutes, which she said did not cause too much trouble for her home.
Jasmine Merkens talks about the surprising loss of power she experienced on Tuesday, February 16, at her home in southern Moorhead. Michael Vosburg / Forum Photo Editor
“Fortunately, we weren’t making breakfast or anything,” said Merkens.
The temperature in Moorhead on Tuesday morning was around zero. Most gas ovens cannot operate without electricity, and homes that rely on electric heating are particularly vulnerable to power outages.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Moorhead Public Service offered an apology to its customers for the short notice about the blackouts. But for MPS and other local utility providers like this one in western Minnesota, North Dakota and much of the central United States, these calls for continuous blackouts came with little or no warning.
The MPS said in a press release that it was notified around 9:20 am on Tuesday that blackouts would start at 9:50 am. The dealership then informed the public that blackouts, lasting about 30 minutes at a time in any neighborhood, were starting and would continue indefinitely.
The MPS was able to return to normal operations after the first 30 minutes of continuous blackouts.
Blackouts follow the guidelines of Southwest Power Pool (SPP), a grid operator serving 14 central states in the United States, including North Dakota, South Dakota and the western border of Minnesota. The SPP entered and exited Level 3 Energy Emergency Alert, its most serious emergency status, in response to unprecedented tensions in the regional network caused by the cold climate in the southern states.
The emergency marks the first time in the network operator’s 85-year history that it has needed to take drastic measures, such as controlled outages along SPP’s extensive coverage area.
In a media call on Tuesday afternoon, SPP officials said the cold weather delivered two blows to the power grid, increasing demand from cold customers and forcing SPP to deal with a power outage caused by limited power supplies. natural gas and energy transfer problems from neighboring networks.
Consumer demand soared on Monday and increased significantly more on Tuesday, contributing to disruptions in the Upper Midwest, officials said.
SPP officials said they did everything possible to prevent blackouts, explaining that they waited until the last possible moment to stop the service, making the final call in minutes, “if not seconds”.
“We would like to inform people in advance that their service is about to be stopped,” Lanny Nickells, executive vice president of the energy pool, said in a conference call with reporters across the country on Tuesday afternoon. “The reason we don’t do this is to wait as long as we can to make that decision,” added Nickells.
The SPP grid covers large portions of North Dakota, South Dakota and the western border of Minnesota, but the overlap of two separate grid systems in the upper midwest means that the impact of continuous blackouts is uneven. Families supplied by Montana-Dakota Utilities or Xcel Energy, for example, stay on a separate power grid, and both suppliers said on Tuesday that they do not expect interruptions for their customers.
But even as the SPP said has little ability to provide more warning time, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum said in a press release that he asked senior officials of the Western Area Power Administration, the upstream energy supplier that serves much of the middle- upper west of the SPP network, to give as many warnings of imminent blackouts as possible to utility companies and their customers.
“While we understand that WAPA received a quick warning from the SPP to reduce the load, North Dakota residents deserve as much time as possible to prepare for blackouts before their service areas are affected,” said Burgum on Tuesday afternoon. -market. “These agencies must also ensure that continuous blackouts do not have a negative domino effect, by moving other sources of energy off the grid, such as gas processing plants in western North Dakota.”
The outages left thousands in Minnesota and Dakotas without power for intermittent periods, with most outages lasting from 30 minutes to an hour.
Early in the afternoon, network operators reduced their emergency status and put a temporary pause on continuous blackouts. But SPP officials emphasized that the network’s stability remained tenuous and projected that its response could fluctuate between different emergency levels in the next 24 to 48 hours.
The demands on the network are especially pronounced in the early morning and evening, when people wake up and return home from work, SPP officials said.
The outages also extended to central North Dakota, where a spokesman for Capital Electric Cooperative, which serves customers in Burleigh and Sheridan counties, said that at one point about a third of its 21,000 customers were without power.
In South Dakota, more than 7,000 people were without power at around 10 am on Tuesday, according to the Poweroutage.us tracker. One county, Beadle, in southeastern South Dakota, had 93% of customers without power on Tuesday morning.
In Minnesota, the MPS reported blackouts between 10 am and noon. MPS general manager Travis Schmidt said that additional blackouts were possible in the area again between 4 pm and 10 pm on Tuesday night, and again between 6 am and 10 am on Wednesday.
Schmidt said the MPS was splitting the outages between two areas, so that when the outages were called, one area would be without power for 30 minutes while the other area still had power.
The two areas then reverse roles for the next 30 minutes, with the pattern repeating as long as necessary, said Schmidt.
Forum News Service reporter Jeremy Fugleberg contributed to this report. Readers can contact Forum reporter Dave Olson at [email protected] and reporter Adam Willis at [email protected].