TOPEKA — Operators of the regional power grid again ordered utilities to implement rolling blackouts Tuesday morning to conserve natural gas and electricity as bitterly cold temperatures plunged to double-digit negatives.
The rare, emergency action was a temporary response to skyrocketing natural gas prices, high demand for power and an unprecedented week of extreme wintry conditions for the middle swath of the country. The National Weather Service office in Topeka recorded an overnight low of -21, the seventh-coldest day ever, and a new record low for the third straight day.
Low temperatures combined with moisture created problems with wind turbines, access to natural gas and the burning of coal across the Southwest Power Pool, which manages a 17-state power grid.
The SPP on Monday declared its first-ever emergency and ordered all utilities to shut off power to rotating blocks of customers for 30-60 minutes. The order was reissued Tuesday morning and halted before noon, with the caveat that later blackouts may be needed.
In a briefing Tuesday morning, Chuck Caisley, a senior vice president at Evergy, said the SPP gave the utility 10 minutes to reduce its load. That provided virtually no time to give customers warning before shutting their power off, Caisley said.
On Monday, Evergy inflicted temporary blackouts on 34,000 customers in western Missouri and 18,000 in eastern Kansas. The utility at 6:45 a.m. Tuesday began shutting off power to 170,000 customers.
“We try and pick places that will keep the grid balanced and stable and operational from our service territory, as well as where power is flowing in the Southwest Power Pool generally,” Caisley said. “That’s very complex. It’s done in a very short amount of time.”
Caisely said Kansas was generating enough power to meet demands, but the blackouts helped ease congestion on transmission lines so that power could flow to population centers elsewhere. In Texas, he said, more than 5 million people were without power.
Officials again asked residents to take action to conserve energy. And while Tuesday morning was the worst part of the forecast, temperatures were expected to remain below freezing until Friday.
The SPP in a statement Tuesday said the blackouts are necessary to force conservation of power.
“This is done as a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” the SPP statement said.
Kimberly Gencur Svaty, a lobbyist whose firm works with the energy industry, said the severe weather conditions caused natural gas wellheads to freeze, limiting access to pipelines. The problem escalated over the course of an usual week’s worth of increasingly cold weather.
The cost of natural gas was a normal $3 per mmbtu on Monday of last week, Gencur Svaty said. By Wednesday, the price had doubled.
The highest pricing in decades had during the polar vortex of 2014, when the cost was $34 per mmbtu, Gencur Svaty said. By Thursday, the price was up to $45. That’s when an ice storm hit Oklahoma and Texas.
“Madness ensued in the natural gas market,” she said.
