Frigid temperatures across western North Carolina and neighboring states led to record demand for electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority – and rolling blackouts to manage the surge.
According to the TVA, the agency recorded its highest 24-hour electricity demand in history at 740 gigawatt hours Friday. The TVA also hit its all-time highest weekend peak power demand at 31,756 megawatts at 1 a.m. Saturday, Christmas Eve. According to the National Weather Service, residents in parts of Cherokee County later woke up to a temperature of only 1 degree Fahrenheit on Saturday morning.
The TVA, which supplies power to several Appalachian states and serves about 10 million people, ordered the utilities it supplies to begin outages Saturday morning. Murphy Electric Power Board, Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corp. and Duke Energy all alerted customers to expect emergency outages.
“Due to extreme cold driving unusually high energy demand in the Carolinas, we have begun short, temporary power outages across our system,” Duke Energy said in a statement posted online. “These emergency outages are necessary to protect the energy grid against longer, more widespread outages.
“The majority of these emergency outages will be restored remotely within 15-30 minutes; however, in some cases, a crew will need to be dispatched, extending restoration times. Also, it is possible that other unrelated factors, such as downed tree limbs, are also causing outages at the same time.”
Blue Ridge Mountain EMC acknowledged a “large outage in the Hanging Dog area of Cherokee County, N.C,” as of 9:14 a.m. on Christmas Day, with lines down near the old Dockery’s Store. At noon, the agency posted an update to Facebook saying the repair work was almost complete.
The TVA also made power-conserving recommendations via social media over the weekend, including requests for customers to lower their thermostats by a few degrees and put off laundry until a later time. WKRK reported that Murphy Power Board asked local residents to unplug or turn off any nonessential devices.
“We are grateful for our 153 local power company partners, large customers and communities as we worked together to ensure a stable power grid for us all,” the TVA said in a statement posted to social media Monday night. “Working together, we met this unprecedented challenge.”
Online response was predictably mixed, with some social media users praising power suppliers and others criticizing them for the gaps in service. In Cherokee County, portions of the criticism centered around power being supplied to crypto mining facilities.
Director of Construction Jack Lewis said Core Scientific in Marble suspended operations impacting TVA and Duke Energy on Friday, returning about 250 megawatts of power to the grid. For comparison, he pointed out that Hiwassee Dam can generate 194 megawatts at full production.
Operations restarted at Core, which is mostly enclosed, about 2 p.m. Saturday. However, an unenclosed crypto mine run by Ankr had more people’s attention.
“It’s in the 20s right now, and the Harshaw (Road) mine is running,” Murphy resident Judy Stines said in a Facebook post Monday night. “Don’t even think about asking us to turn down our thermostats or unplug things.”