Southwest Power Pool declares conservative operations due to heat
SPP says the conservative operations will be for its entire balancing authority footprint, which includes Lincoln.
LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — The Southwest Power Pool is set to enter conservative operations due to hot weather and high demand.
SPP says the conservative operations will be for its entire balancing authority footprint, which includes Lincoln and much of Nebraska.
It will begin at noon Thursday and is expected to last end at 8 p.m. Friday.
SPP says outages are not expected.
SPP says conservative operations are declared when it is determined there is a need to operate the system conservatively based on weather, environmental, operational, terrorist, cyber or other events.
SPP spokesman Derek Wingfield said the move acts as a signal to utilities who operate power plants and transmission lines that they should operate these components of the regional power grid more conservatively than usual to mitigate against the risk that further contingencies could lead to outages.
Wingfield said if conditions worsened to the point that SPP’s 14-state region could no longer maintain its required generating reserves, it would then issue a separate call for public conservation.
“We’ve done this only once in our 80-year history, and that was during the February 2021 winter storm when our whole region experienced historically cold temperatures for days on end that led to natural gas shortages and record-high electricity use simultaneously,” Wingfield told Channel 8 in an email.
