NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — After targeted outages that hit Middle Tennessee during the holiday weekend, the Tennessee Valley Authority said it's going to undergo an internal review to better prepare for extreme weather hitting the grid.
It was the first time in the authority's 90-year history that targeted outages had to happen, which affected thousands of households across the state. TVA said it had an unprecedented power peak due to the cold weather that struck in the single digits and created negative-degree windchill.
"We at TVA take full responsibility for the impact we had on our customers," officials said in a statement Wednesday. "We never want to impact anyone’s energy at any time. This is not the way we want to serve our communities and customers. We are conducting a thorough review of what occurred and why. We are committed to sharing these lessons learned and — more importantly — the corrective actions we take in the weeks ahead to ensure we are prepared to manage significant events in the future."
On two occasions during a 24-hour period, TVA directed local power companies to reduce power consumption. On Friday, Dec. 23, a 5% system-wide power consumption reduction for two hours and 15 minutes.
And on Christmas Eve, a system-wide power consumption reduction in 5-10% curtailments for 5 hours and 40 minutes. Most of the local power companies were able to target power reductions that impacted customers for relatively short durations, TVA said.
In an earlier interview with NewsChannel 5 during the blackout period, TVA said the targeting effort usually became a snap decision to do so.
"TVA plans for these events every spring and fall," TVA spokesperson Scott Fiedler said. "This event exceeded those expectations. We move very quickly with this because saw increasing loads and we wanted to ensure reliability with those targeted load curtailments. It gets to the point where conditions are so extreme you just can’t counter it."
