omaha | Nebraska’s publicly owned utilities generated more power than their customers used during this week’s brutal cold snap in the country’s midsection.
But energy experts say the targeted rolling blackouts criticized by Gov. Pete Ricketts prevented Nebraska and other states from catastrophic failure of a shared electricity grid.
Those cuts, dictated by the Arkansas-based Southwest Power Pool, likely prevented Nebraskans from living the nightmare facing Texas, where millions went without power for days.
The World-Herald spoke with energy experts, utility leaders and others about what happened, why it happened and what might prevent a repeat occurrence.
Why did Nebraska have rolling blackouts?
A polar vortex brought freezing temperatures to the southern U.S., with the cold snap staying for days as far south as the Mexican border.
Utilities in Oklahoma and slices of Texas that belong to the power pool struggled to operate some natural gas, coal and wind power plants not equipped to run in such cold temperatures.
Getting natural gas out of the ground was also slowed in both states, with frozen wells and pipelines making it harder to deliver the gas needed to generate electricity and heat homes.
Even in Nebraska, where colder temperatures are common, some power plants struggled in sub-zero conditions to operate at full capacity, including coal-fired units in Nebraska City.
The loss of that power production left the power pool, which manages electrical supply and demand across a 14-state power grid, with a power imbalance.
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