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Insights > Demand Slowly Falling from Shortfalls Seen Earlier This Week
Demand Slowly Falling from Shortfalls Seen Earlier This Week
02/19/2021
Extreme temperatures combined with winter precipitation created levels of electricity demand periodically exceeding the supply across Entergy’s four-state service territory earlier this week.
Following three waves of extreme winter weather, power supply availability has improved across our territory. Our reliability coordinator, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, stated this morning the MISO system is steady and stable.
Due to extremely cold temperatures, the electricity demand reached all-time highs in parts of our service territory. Tuesday evening, the demand exceeded supply and we were ordered by MISO to implement brief forced outages across the Entergy region to prevent more extensive, prolonged power outages.
Electric utilities across multiple states, including all electricity providers in the southern half of the MISO system, participated in this event. The reduction of power across the MISO South region ensured an adequate reserve margin and was implemented to prevent a failure of the larger electrical grid. While always a last resort option, load shedding is sometimes necessary to protect the reliability of the power grid and ensure the system can quickly recover.
Some of our customers in the western part of our Texas service area remain under alert, as we ensure our transmission and generation systems can adequately support the region.
For more information on load shed and balancing electric supply and demand, visit entergy.com/loadshed.
Storm Restoration Efforts Continue
The severe winter weather system brought a wintery mix of ice, snow and freezing rain, causing damage to nearly 300 poles, 430 transformers and 2,200 spans of wire across our territory as of 9 p.m. Thursday.
Damage assessments continue while our restoration workforce of more than 7,700 has reduced the number of customer outages caused by the storm. Weather conditions hampered some restoration efforts and significant numbers of outages remain in Louisiana and Mississippi. The pace of restoration should increase as the weather improves and temperatures rise.
We will continue to restore service to our customers as safely and quickly as possible. However, we must continue our cold-weather restoration processes to manage instantaneous demand. Customers can stay up to date by visiting the Entergy Storm Center website. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook or check for updates with your local news media like radio, television and newspapers.
