‘Level 2 situation’ urges conservation, preparation for potential 'controlled outages' – a.k.a. rolling blackouts
Golden Valley Electric Association issued its first energy-emergency alert Monday that advises members to conserve electricity and prepare for possible controlled outages -- also known as rolling blackouts.
The alert will remain in effect through Wednesday.
Golden Valley CEO Travis Million advised members about the alert system in January, after a few cold snaps required the co-op to fire up all its power-generating facilities to keep up with the demand for electricity.
“We just want to ensure the membership that this is just a proactive thing,” Million said. “We want to get out in front to communicate this information.”
GVEA spokesperson Ashley Bradish said Monday that the co-op was about to begin a more detailed explanation of the three-level alert system. But by the afternoon, co-op officials determined they were in another peak-demand situation, with only a minimal cushion -- 15 megawatts-- of reserve generating capacity.
“ We were planning to introduce the energy emergency alerts to members this week,” she said, “really explaining the different levels, what they can do at each level, and what they mean. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in a Level 2 situation before we had a chance to do that.”
Alert Level 1 advises members to begin conserving electricity. Level 2 urges members to both conserve and prepare for the possibility of controlled outages. Level 3 advises members that controlled outages are imminent, and to prepare for blackouts by taking such measures as charging cellphones and unplugging all nonessential electrical appliances.
“ I do want to prepare the membership that this is probably not going to be a one-off,” Bradish said. “It is likely that they will be seeing Level 1 and Level 2 alerts, because the generation situation that we're in is not a quick fix, unfortunately.”
Golden Valley’s board and management team are working on acquiring another large turbine-powered generator to increase the capacity. They’re also looking at other sources of energy. But it’ll take years to bring those online.
Meanwhile, Bradish advised members to begin learning about the energy emergency-alert program that’s outlined on the Golden Valley website.
“ That has everything that you might need to know about each of the different levels,” she said. “What conservation measures you could take, how that all works, what communication channels you can find different information on, what communication you can expect from GVEA.”
The website address is gvea.com. There’s an energy-emergency alert advisory at the top of the homepage, with a button to click for more information.
