Kansas City area faces rolling power outages as regional power grid emergency declared
Electrical utilities that provide power to the Kansas City area warned that additional rolling power outages were imminent Tuesday morning as the grid that serves 14 states was experiencing a power shortage.
Evergy announced that it was resuming 30 to 60 minute rolling blackouts due to regional power supply needs as directed by Southwest Power Pool Inc., which manages the electrical grid across 14 central and western United States, including the Kansas City area.
Southwest Power Pool declared an energy emergency about 6:15 a.m. saying that system-wide power generating capacity had dropped below the demand for power due to extremely low temperatures and inadequate supplies of natural gas.
“We’ll be working with our member utilities to implement controlled interruptions of electric service throughout our region,” the company said. “This is done as a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.”
Southwest Power Pool urged customers to conserve energy and follow their local utilities instructions regarding the potential for outages to their homes and businesses.
“We are doing them (rolling blackouts) as we speak,” said David E. Mehlhaff, chief communications officer for the Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Public Utilities. “The first one was out in the legends area. They’re back up now — should be back up — they last 40 minutes.”
The BPU anticipates that the rolling blackouts will be occurring throughout the day until they hear otherwise from the Southwest Power Pool.
“Yesterday we had a total of 1,200 customers that were impacted,” Mehlhaff said. “Right now, we’ve got 3100 people out.”
Evergy urged customers to turn down their thermostats, close blinds and shades to reduce heat loss through windows, change or clean furnace filters and turn off unnecessary lights and appliances.
The power grid emergency comes as already dangerous temperatures plunged even lower. Temperatures had dropped to -10 degrees shortly before 7 a.m. at Kansas City International Airport. Overnight wind chills were around -20 degrees.
Because of the dangerously cold conditions and the potential for rolling blackouts, school districts in the Kansas City area have declared a snow day, canceling classes, or have moved to remote learning for Tuesday.
On Monday, thousands of electrical customers throughout Kansas City and Independence experienced rolling service outages as utilities scrambled to meet the high demand for electricity due to the extreme cold weather conditions.
Evergy said said on Twitter that roughly 60,000 customers were without power for some 30 minutes Monday. Independence Power & Light said about 2,000 customers at a time were without electrical service for about 30 minutes.
The Kansas City, Kansas Board of Public Utilities said it too began rolling blackouts to blocks of customers, which lasted about 40 minutes.
Mayor Quinton Lucas on Monday asked that the city’s downtown skyline go dark to conserve electricity.
This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 7:45 AM.
