With the National Weather Service calling for a low of 4 degrees Wednesday night, the Tennessee Valley Authority is preparing for power consumption levels comparable to last January when the utility saw record winter demand.
Spokesman Scott Brooks said TVA expects a demand load of 31,000-33,000 megawatts during the coldest part of this week. Brooks said the high demand could prompt TVA to invoke interruptible service contracts to cut power consumption.
“That is always one of our options available to us," Brooks said. "We are under a conservative operations alert right now, which means we’re stopping any maintenance activities that might impact our generation for the next couple of days.”
Brooks said this scenario is a little different than last year because this arctic blast is relatively short compared to multiple days last winter where temperatures bottomed out in single digits.
TVA's generating capacity has not increased or decreased in any significant way since winter 2014, according to Brooks.