Image Credit: Tennessee Valley Authority / Facebook
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
Despite talks over the last few months about upgraded systems and rate increases for customers in an effort to “ensure the region has the energy it needs to meet growing demand”, the Tennessee Valley Authority proved unable to keep up with the state’s power demands during recent extreme winter conditions.
A new TVA record was set on Wednesday morning with a peak power demand of 34,526 megawatts with an average system temperature of only 4 degrees. The previous record was 33,482 megawatts in August 2007.
TVA was unable to keep up with that demand, leaving many East Tennessee residents without power as temperatures dove well below freezing.
Customers in Knox, Anderson, Sevier, and Blount Counties were among those affected by the outages.
TVA had asked customers to voluntarily conserve energy, particularly between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.
On the other end of the state, Memphis residents were assured that rumored rolling blackouts were not in the works, according to Memphis Light, Gas, and Water. While they did ask customers to conserve energy, the company says they have no plans to institute blackouts at this time.
A study released in November by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that Tennessee was one of the states with the highest risk of blackouts and an electricity shortage. Residents dealt with a similar issue in late 2022, suffering through rolling blackouts when extremely cold temperatures were more than the power grids could handle.
Former U.S. Congressman Jim Matheson, who now serves as CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, noted then that the state needs to go ahead and move forward with building new power plants to handle the increasing demands.
TVA and other utility companies are still asking customers to conserve energy as much as possible as the state continues to deal with below freezing conditions. Temperatures are expected to rise slightly above freezing on Thursday afternoon.
9 Responses
Now imagine what would have happen if all those Electric vehicles were “plugged in” that Biden is promoting???
That man doesn’t have the brains to climb stairs, much less manage a country.
How about we buy electricity on the open market to help with our electricity needs? I keep hearing that Tennessee has some of the lowest energy prices in the U.S. If what I’m paying is the lowest then I’d hate to see the highest. Even in summer when it was 90+ and with my electric dryer. I wasn’t paying as much as I do now when I was in Illinois. They did do one thing right and deregulated natural gas and electricity. I also never had to apply for membership and “prove” my address in order to get electricity. I was also never told that I couldn’t have my natural gas turned on because they don’t consider my gas heater to be a primary source of heat. Who are they to tell me how to heat my house.
Lockdown Lee said TN was “leading the way”. $880 Million to Ford, stealing farmland for Blue Oval City highways, while Ford cuts the current coal-powered truck production in half. Half the Ford dealers refusing to sell them! Another taxpayer-funded boondoggle.
While TVA decommissioned Bull Run a couple of months ago, that giant coal-fired power plant that you see from I40 between Nashville and Knoxville. Bull Run had been upgraded where you didn’t see smoke billowing out of those stacks; yet the US is determined to eliminate all fossil fuels? The WEF heralds China as an exemplary nation, yet do your homework and you will find that the Chinese coal-fired plants are responsible for much of the pollution in the US. China has not done near as much as the United States to clean up energy production. Is there any way that Tennessee could acquire Bull Run, put it back in production, and sell the electricity back to TVA?
That’s the Kingston steam plant visible from I-40. Bull Run is between Oak Ridge and Claxton.
TVA board of directors is totally infested with Biden’s dimmercrap appointees. NOTHING operated by dimmercraps is gonna work right.
Without doing the research, my guess is that the power outages were due to local utility issues (downed power lines due to fallen trees/excessive wind/etc.), not lack of supply from TVA. If so, then this article, particularly the headline, suggests that the outages were due to TVA unable to meet energy demands. While that has been true in the recent past, I suggest lack of TVA supply is not accurate in this instance and this article is misleading at best and undermines the integrity of this website at the worst.
The system didn’t reach record power demand because of fallen trees. Might should read article again, paying close attention to the headline.
There is no reason for electricity usage in one day to be almost $25. We are paying high fees for board members to meet 8 times a year and make as much as some people make in a year.
And I call them demoncrats, not dimmercrats.