Kansas City, MO – More rolling blackouts affected residents in the KC Metro on Tuesday as utility companies worked to conserve energy across a wide swath of the central US during the deep freeze.
By midmorning, power company Evergy said via tweet that "intermittent outages have been suspended at this time. Power should be coming back online soon for those impacted."
The Southwest Power Pool declared a Level 3 EEA, or Emergency Alert Level, early Tuesday morning as utilities continued to be stressed by high usage due to the bitter cold temperatures.
The SPP functions as a type of air traffic control for electric utilities.
The SPP tweeted, "Systemwide generating capacity has dropped below our current load of ~42 GW due to extremely low temperatures and inadequate supplies of natural gas."
This Level 3 was called for the first time ever Monday, requiring power shutoffs in 14 states, including for utilities in Kansas and Missouri.
"They are the ones that are calling for this reduction in demand," said Paul Lampe, a system operations manager with Independence Power and Light.
All utilities participate – Independence Power and Light, Evergy, the Board of Public Utilities — but each gets to implement its own strategy. Because they need to reduce power demand by 1% to 5%, there are temporary shutoffs.