NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The February ice storms left more than 300,000 Middle Tennessee households without power — 230,000 of them Nashville Electric Service customers. While all electric utilities had crews working around the clock, over 100,000 NES customers remained in the dark for more than a week, with some waiting nearly two weeks. Many voiced frustration over poor communication and a lack of transparency.
Once recovery efforts were underway, State Republicans began calling for a state takeover of NES, placing blame on its leadership for the widespread outages.
State Democrats — Senator Heidi Campbell and Representative Jason Powell — are taking a different approach. They’ve filed the Electric Grid Resilience, Transparency and Planning Act, legislation aimed at improving recovery efforts and increasing accountability. Rep. Powell, who lost power at his own home, said he heard from many frustrated constituents.
"We all went to the grocery store Monday, Tuesday before the storm hit. People in Nashville knew something serious was coming and they took precautions and they took it seriously. Yet NES... They should have been better prepared and that is what our bill is about."
Senator Campbell is co-sponsoring the bill. Her home was without power for 11 days.
"The blame for this goes much further than NES. I don't think we can just blame NES. We also have to look at leadership on the state level, on the municipal level and quite frankly on the federal level. We are having trouble getting expedited resources from the federal government right now."
This story was reported by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
