Nearly 24 hours after an intentional power outage knocked out power to Southeast Louisiana, Cleco officials they are investigating what caused the massive energy demand that forced regional energy regulators to shed some of that load via a brownout.
Cleco spokesperson Jennifer Cahill says about 25,000 of the utility company’s customers in St. Tammany Parish lost electricity during the brownout, which was ordered by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator to reduce the demand on the regional electricity system and to prevent a regional blackout.
“If the power supply cannot meet the demand, periodic power outages could be needed to protect the stability of the power grid and prevent widespread lengthy outages,” Cahill said in a statement. “This was the case yesterday when we took the unprecedented step, as directed by MISO, to force outages to some customers in St. Tammany Parish.”
According to Cahill, impacted customers, who live in the Covington, Mandeville, Madisonville, Lacombe, and Franklinton areas, were without electricity for about two hours. Cahill said Cleco “(strives) to give . . . customers advance notice of any outages.” However, she noted that “this emergency situation did not allow us the time to inform our customers ahead of time.”
Cahill says Cleco and MISO are partnering to figure out what happened on Sunday to cause the power outages and how to prevent something like that from happening again.
“Cleco will continue to coordinate with MISO to monitor the system,” Cahill said. “And Cleco and MISO are working together to investigate the cause of the outage and prevent similar incidents in the future.”
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