The blizzard, dubbed “Winter Storm Elliott,” swept across the United States and Canada and was felt as far south as Georgia over the course of the week of Christmas. Dayton saw its fastest 12-hour temperature drop on record, falling 53 degrees total from 45 degrees to minus 8 degrees, according to the National Weather Service in Wilmington. Sunday was also the coldest Christmas Day on record since 1985 with a high of 14 degrees, and the fifth coldest Christmas since 1893.
In Dayton, from midnight Thursday to midnight Wednesday, 21,000 customers lost power, not all at the same time, AES Ohio spokesperson Mary Ann Kabel said. At one point late Thursday, AES Ohio reported more than 1,500 customers without electricity, but crews quickly restored service to most of those affected.
Ohio fared better than other parts of the nation, as energy transmission organization PJM Interconnection warned rolling blackouts might be necessary, but were never instituted.
The conditions of the weekend were “extremely rare,” said PJM spokesman Jeff Shields. “The weather conditions, while extreme, were within the outer limits of the range we had planned for prior to the start of the winter.”
On Dec. 23 and 24, a “significantly higher than expected” quantity of generation failed to start, or tripped offline while running, Shields said, which led the transmission authority to call on customers across their jurisdiction to reduce electricity use on Christmas Eve.
Ohio and all or part of 13 other states operate in PJM’s jurisdiction. Had rolling blackouts happened, they would have occurred across PJM’s entire territory, reaching to the eastern seaboard.
Grid operators have traditionally planned for weather events based on historical conditions, Shields said. However, those operators are increasingly preparing for weather conditions “that we have not seen before.”
“When generators failed, it was public conservation and other measures that helped stabilize the system,” Shields said.
Operation and oversight of the electric grid is a shared responsibility between federal, state and private entities, said Matt Schilling of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. National agencies like FERC have direct jurisdiction over wholesale power markets, high-voltage transmission systems, and interstate siting of energy infrastructure. Regional transmission organizations like PJM are responsible for coordinating flow and sale of wholesale electricity. PUCO has responsibility over the electric distribution system, such as local substations and wires, and electric distribution utilities deliver power to end-use customers.
Ohio’s electric distribution utilities are currently modernizing their systems through “smart grid” investments. AES Ohio is in the middle of a $249 million venture to install a smart grid across their service territory, using “smart meters” and automated circuit equipment to respond to outages in real time, Schilling said.
According to their four-year plan, AES will invest $77.6 million in providing nearly all its customers with smart meters. The smart meters would create a “self-healing grid,” which would pinpoint exactly where outages occur, Kabel said Thursday.
The plan would also give competitive retail electric service providers access to customer usage data, with customer permission, so that providers can offer rates “tailored” to a customer, company officials testified before regulators in 2021.
While the smart grid isn’t designed to solve all problems generated by a winter storm, it is a significant “tool in the toolbox” to combat power outages from significant weather events, Kabel said.
“We are always making improvements to our electric infrastructure,” she said. “With the smart grid, it’s not only infrastructure, but that digital component as well.”
The severe cold from Winter Storm Elliot caused power outages across the country. The Tennessee Valley Authority in the southeastern U.S. instituted several hours of temporary interruptions, or rolling blackouts, throughout much of their service area. Additionally, Duke Energy in North Carolina instituted rolling blackouts, with some Carolina residents without power for hours, the Charlotte Observer reported Thursday.
Two regulatory authorities, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) announced Wednesday they would open a joint inquiry into the operations of the bulk power system during the storm.
“There will be multiple lessons learned from last week’s polar vortex that will inform future winter preparations. In addition to the load shedding in Tennessee and the Carolinas, multiple energy emergencies were declared and new demand records were set across the continent. And this was in the early weeks of a projected ‘mild’ winter,” NERC President and CEO Jim Robb said.
In 2020, the United Nations released a report that observed the number of natural disasters worldwide had increased sharply, from 4,212 between 1980 and 1999, to 7,348 between 2000 to 2019, attributing this increase to the effects of climate change.
“This storm underscores the increasing frequency of significant extreme weather events (the fifth major winter event in the last 11 years) and underscores the need for the electric sector to change its planning scenarios and preparations for extreme events,” Robb added.
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