Duke Energy addresses rolling blackouts, Governor Cooper calls for answers

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) - Cold weather combined with high winds heading into the Christmas weekend led to problems for customers of Duke Energy with thousands being left in the dark during some of the coldest days of the year. Rolling blackouts were scheduled by the power company leaving some without power for hours in an effort to prevent even larger outages.

Jeff Brooks has worked for Duke Energy Progress for years and says during that time he’s never seen something like this happen but the combined factors are what led to the inconvenience for many.

“We had a windstorm that came in, that created significant outages on Friday and that was a main focus just from physical damage to the system. But there was also the extreme cold temperatures that we had going into the weekend,” he said.

Rolling blackouts are not common but they can help protect the power grid and prevent overloading the system causing even more problems.

“The idea behind those outages is that we can take a temporary controlled outage that will help to avoid a potentially larger outage that affects more customers for a longer period of time,” Brooks said.

Fortunately for customers the weather is warming up and Brooks said these outages shouldn’t be needed in the coming days.

“We’re looking at, as typical North Carolina weather goes, 70 degrees by the end of the week. So we’re not going to be in a situation where we we have to deal with this,” he said.

On Monday Governor Roy Cooper expressed his concerns with the outages and posted a statement on Twitter.

“Duke Energy assures me NC is in the clear now. But I’m deeply concerned about people who lost power and who didn’t get notice about rotating outages. Grateful for those who conserved energy. I’ve asked Duke for a complete report on what went wrong and for changes to be made,” he wrote.

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