LINCOLN, Nebraska (KOLN) – Thousands of Nebraskans woke up this morning without power, with LES and NPPD being needed to operate rotary outages. It occurs at a time when the central United States is experiencing extreme cold and many states are struggling to meet demands.
Disruptions occurred across the city and Nebraska between 7 am and 10 am
Rick Batten, a Denton resident, was among those affected. He was affected not by one, but by two continuous interruptions with only a 15-minute break.
“Our house has dropped to 60 degrees,” said Batten. “My wife and I sat by the fire and I had managed to make some coffee, so we had coffee and everyone read the news and that’s how we spent the morning.”
He is not alone. 44,000 LES customers and an unknown number of NPPD customers were without power for between 30-60 minutes. The companies said the decision was beyond their control.
“We still don’t know why this happened, but we knew that we were required by regulatory requirements to do so and, if we didn’t, we would be subject to penalties,” said Kevin Wailes, CEO of LES.
The call was made by Southwest Power Pool, which is charged with 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,” said Wailes. “But the rest of the footprint was having problems with fuel and cold weather.”
Tom Kent, CEO and president of the NPPD said that if no action had been taken, a widespread uncontrolled outage could have occurred.
Both NPPD and LES said they worked to ensure that customers received as many warnings as possible, but as it was an emergency, they couldn’t do much.
“It was an unusual cold wave,” said Kent. “I know that everyone would love to know when it would happen at home, I know that my wife wanted to know when it would happen at our home, but there is no way to know.”
Kent and Wailes said the companies worked to maintain electricity in places like hospitals, prisons and 911 call centers. They also said they are optimistic that there will be no further interruptions, but there are no guarantees.
On how this could impact LES accounts, Wailes said that as customers use more energy to heat their homes, their bills will increase, but he said that LES cannot raise rates without a vote by the board of LES and the Lincoln City Council.
Customers like Batten said that while it is inconvenient to have a power outage, a small outage like the one he experienced is better than what is happening in Texas, where he has some loved ones.
“They’ve been without power for 36 hours and it’s 40 degrees at home,” said Batten. “So I think that anything we can do to reduce and share energy is what everyone should be doing.”
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