Cold Snap Leads To Record Energy Demand

This week’s cold temperatures led to record peak demands of energy consumption for TVA and Volunteer Energy.

VEC Marketing and Economic Development Vice President David Murphy said the company was able to handle the energy usage without any major issues or blackouts. Murphy said much of the success is due to TVA’s work to winterize its facilities over the past two years.

“They did have a couple of their nuclear units offline for other reasons and so that immediately caused concern because the generating facilities over at Watts Bar and Sequoyah are instrumental to the base load,” Murphy said. “But they were able to overcome that through purchasing power off of the electric system from outside of the Tennessee Valley.”

Murphy said Volunteer Energy’s demand peaked at around 738 megawatts at 9:00am Wednesday. Murphy said he thinks the worst of the situation is behind us.

“It actually was not as bad as we anticipated it possibly being,” Murphy said. “With the forecast that they meteorologist had given us, we were expecting to see some of the lowest temperatures that VEC has to date.”

Murphy said TVA was predicting that it would hit 35,600 megawatts of usage throughout its entire system and peak demand ended up around 35,800. Murphy said this was the most significant energy demand event he has seen in his career.

“We weren’t mandating anybody turn off lights or lower their thermostats, we simply asked for their help if they were willing and able,” Murphy said. “The response to that was overwhelming. We sent out an email communication to our membership yesterday and over fifty thousand of our members saw that email and were actively working to help us during this situation.”

Murphy said there have been minor power outages throughout the region as part of the weather event, but nothing widespread.