Duke Energy does not plan temporary outages Sunday, continues urging energy conservation
A day after taking the rare move of implementing rolling, temporary blackouts across its power grid in the Carolinas, Duke Energy said it did not need to repeat that action on Sunday.
The Charlotte-based electric utility made it through the morning peak without the need for “load reductions” Sunday, spokesman Bill Norton said.
Duke Energy also had asked people to conserve energy usage through Christmas. At about 3:45 p.m. Sunday, the company said it was asking customers to keep conserving energy and consider shutting off non-essential lights until 10 a.m. Monday “to avoid possible rotating outages.”
Overwhelming demand for heat during the region’s arctic plunge over the weekend forced Duke Energy to roll out controlled blackouts of 15 to 30 minutes across the Carolinas Saturday on the morning of Christmas Eve.
That move left hundreds of thousands of customers in North and South Carolina unexpectedly without power. Many took to social medial to complain that their outages were lasting for up to hours.
Duke Energy ended the rolling outages around 11:30 a.m. Saturday and began restoring power to customers, although not all of the power loss was from the planned outages. Duke Energy had been restoring power to about 10,000 customers at a time.
At one point Saturday morning, about 100,000 customers had no power in the Charlotte region. By 10 a.m. Sunday, power had been restored to most of the area, with a Duke Energy outage map showing fewer than 800 customers without power in Mecklenburg County.
Norton had said he could not recall the last time Duke Energy needed to implement controlled blackouts to deal with demands on the electric grid.
Charlotte’s weather
Meanwhile, the Charlotte region was prepping for one of its coldest Christmas Days in decades, before temperatures started warming up.
Sunday’s weather is expected to be sunny, with a high of 36 degrees and a low Sunday night of 16, according to the National Weather Service in Greer, South Carolina.
Monday also will be sunny, with a low of 25 and a high of 38 degrees, the NWS predicted. Tuesday through Thursday also looks to be sunny in the region.
Conservation tips
In asking customers to conserve power, Duke Energy suggested that people:
▪ Select the lowest comfortable thermostat setting and bump it down several degrees whenever possible.
▪ Avoid using large appliances with a three-pronged plug, such as dishwashers, ovens and dryers, during high-demand periods like early mornings.
▪ Shift non-essential activities like laundry to late evening hours when power demand is lower.
▪ Charge electric vehicles overnight.
▪ And if you have an electric water heater, limit the use of hot water as much as possible.
This story was originally published December 25, 2022 at 10:31 AM.
