by Carrie Moritz, Garretson Gazette
The weather has been a major talking point this past week, as large portions of the U.S. see record-breaking lows and snow storms. Locally, Garretson has experienced its coldest temperatures of the winter season, a month later than normal.
Early Tuesday morning, temperatures were near -20 degrees Farenheit in Garretson, with a wind chill level of -22 degrees. The prior four days, residents had been experiencing similar temperatures.
Normally, below zero temperatures are found in mid-January, but the second weekend in February broke records. As of last Friday, the area had already experienced a record-breaking 7 days below 10 degrees Farenheit, which hadn't been recorded since December of 1983, according to KELO.
The freezing temperatures went as far south as Galveston, Texas, who experienced their first bout of snow since 2008. Other areas of Texas were left without power and water by Tuesday morning due to the freeze.
Sioux Valley Energy customers experienced a rolling blackout on Tuesday morning, as part of a nationwide effort to keep from overloading the power grid. The co-op had hoped to be able to alert customers prior to the grid going off-line, but according to the company's Facebook page, the Southwest Power Pool determined that substations required immediate shutdown. This caused over 1600 customers to lose power around 7:00 a.m. Tuesday. On Monday, the Power Pool had issued a Level 3 Emergency Alert and power companies were requesting customers limit their use of electricity and heat.
"I understand our members wanting notice, it is a reasonable request," wrote Sioux Valley Energy CEO Tim McCarthy on Tuesday. "However, in this case today, our system operators are doing what they have to do to literally save the power grid in the central portion of this country. When demand suddenly spikes due to consumer activity or abrupt loss of a generating source that can drop huge amounts of supply in the blink of an eye, there is no time to inform."
Across the Midwest, power substations were shut down as demand exceeded supply. In areas across the south, natural gas valves were freezing, windmill turbines were covered in ice, and a nuclear power station went offline in Missouri. Combined with the cold temperatures requiring more customers to turn up the heat, the power grid experienced dire shortages.
"All of this creates a tremendous amount of load on the national power grid... this has caused an unprecedented demand on our power grid and quite bluntly, it has created the most precarious power situation I have seen in 33 years in this industry," said McCarthy. While the power system is strong, he says, a cascading effect of imploding systems could have caused a catastrophic loss of power if these steps had not been taken.
Natural gas supply was severely affected over the weekend, causing prices that normally trade at $17.50 a decatherm to jump to over $400 a decatherm. While the City of Garretson was able to lock in 70% of their normal price, the overages will severely impact local residents.
" In the winter time, with severe cold, we go over the daily allotted capacity that we have reserved. This is normal operations for most systems," wrote Garretson Mayor Greg Beaner on Tuesday morning (the full write-up can be found here). "We need to purchase this extra amount at the market rate. By declaring a “Critical Day” the prices have changed from $17.50/dekatherm on Friday to an estimated $200-$400/dekatherm." This means that 30% of Garretson's supply was purchased at that market rate.
"We are in contact with our lawyer to see what actions we should take to get help from Pierre regarding this issue," said Mayor Beaner. While Iowa, Kansas, and Texas have all declared states of emergency, it is currently unknown whether South Dakota will, as well.
Demand was expected to stay high through Thursday.
The temperatures were forecasted to rise after Tuesday, with next week's predicted temperatures to be back in the 30's across southeast South Dakota.
