Utility officials: Cold snaps could force outages
As temperatures plummet and wind chills dip below zero this week, Connecticut utility officials are warning local officials and customers about the potential for rolling blackouts if this type of weather is sustained for prolonged periods this winter.
Discussions about a rare rolling blackout began last month when Gordon van Welie, president and CEO of the regional grid provider, ISO-New England, said it was a worst-case scenario if an extended period of cold weather combined with a lack of available natural or liquid gas to fuel the power plants.
While Connecticut’s winter so far has been relatively mild, officials with Eversource and United Illuminating are preparing local officials and customers if the conditions suddenly change.
Mitch Gross, a spokesperson for Eversource, said Connecticut’s largest electric distribution company has begun reaching out to its 1.27 million customers in 149 communities around the state.
Being asked by ISO-New England to implement controlled, rotating power outages would be an “unprecedented step,” Gross said.
“We want our community leaders to understand what this would mean for them and their constituents and how working together, we might be able to conserve enough energy to avoid these outages,” he said. “However, if they were necessary, they would happen periodically, affecting rotating groups of customers and the length would be established based on the situation and ISO’s direction. We recognize that controlled outages would have a significant impact on the communities and customers we serve and we’re committed to communicating our contingency plans so we can work together if an emergency occurs.”
Officials, however, have not said publicly how the blackouts would be rolled out in each community and how long they would last.
Representatives with United Illuminating have begun contacting public officials in the 17 municipalities the company services, providing information about how rolling blackouts would be implemented if New England’s power plants run out of fuel.
UI representatives began meeting with community leaders last week to provide the details “as a precaution should the need arise in the future,” said Gage Frank, a UI spokesperson.
“We’re doing it for preparation and planning purposes in the event the need arises,” Frank said.
He said UI officials expect to finish meeting with officials in each of their communities by the end of the week.
Frank said UI has also asked officials in the towns the company serves to list “where the vulnerable populations are in their communities” so those residents won’t have their power turned off.
“We’ve asked them to let us know that information because each town is different,” Frank said.
Matthew Kakley, a spokesperson for ISO-New England, said the regional electric grid operator “is not seeing anything in our 21-day forecast that would warrant any concern.”
“There’s nothing concerning any weather conditions or oil depletion (at the region’s power plants),” Kakley said. “If those conditions were to present themselves going forward, we would make a public announcement if we saw any reasons for concern.”
Increased demands on New England’s electric grid are likely this week when temperatures plunge into the single digits and the wind chill will make it feel as cold as around negative-10 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
But ISO officials have said temperatures that cold would need to be sustained for a prolonged period for the possibility of temporary blackouts.
Ansonia Mayor David Cassetti said he wasn’t involved in the meeting UI representatives held with city officials. But in general, Cassetti said he’s “very concerned about the state of our grid.”
“It’s an antiquated and old system,” he said. “It needs to be updated.”
Will Healey, a spokesperson for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said ISO-New England “has the obligation to ensure reliability, and most importantly, is the entity with the most insight into the reliability risks the grid faces.”
“We are concerned that ISO has been communicating an increased risk the grid is facing this winter, but has not provided any solutions to address the immediate risk,” Healey said.
Matthew Cassavechia, Danbury’s emergency management director, said city officials are “always concerned about power outages whether they are shortterm or prolonged.” Advanced notice of how the planned outages would occur allows Danbury officials to assess the city’s operation plans, according to Cassavechia.
“They are giving us a framework of what this might look like,” he said. “We want to make sure that the generator we have will be in a readied state. We understand we can’t have a generator at every building, but we want to be able to quickly connect them in the event that this happens.”