Due to the current widespread and extreme cold weather conditions, the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) declared an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) Level 3 this morning, which means that generating capacity has dropped below demand for electricity. Due to the emergency alert, East River Electric is expecting outages of up to an hour that will be on a rolling basis this morning. This is an emergency, quickly changing situation. This is a regionwide event, meaning consumers of multiple utilities are affected.
The following is a listing of updated impacts to East River’s system for Feb. 16:
6:54 a.m.: The Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), which is the Transmission Operator for our region, was directed by SPP to take an outage of about 200 megawatts.
6:57 a.m.: WAPA de-energized substations in parts of western Minnesota impacting about 2,000 members of Lyon-Lincoln Electric Cooperative and City of Tyler customers.
7:00 a.m.: WAPA de-energized substations serving Southeastern Electric customers in the Viborg, Hurley and Menno areas impacting about 2,200 consumers in that area.
7:28 a.m.: WAPA directed by SPP to de-energize another 200 megawatts, so they de-energized substations serving Sioux Valley Energy members on the east side of Sioux Falls, including Brandon – totaling about 6,300 consumers.
7:52 a.m.: WAPA restored power to the substations served from Fodness.
7:54 a.m.: Substations near the Redfield, Cresbard and Mansfield areas de-energized, affecting about 1,400 FEM Electric and Northern Electric consumers. WAPA restored power to substations in the Viborg, Hurley and Menno areas to Southeastern Electric consumers.
8:12 a.m.: WAPA restored power on the Ivanhoe substation serving Lyon-Lincoln Electric and opened breaker at Watertown, affecting 4 substations and about 1,400 Codington-Clark customers.
8:41 a.m.: WAPA restored power to the Maple Street substation in the Sioux Falls area.
9:10 a.m.: WAPA opened Letcher breakers affecting the Roswell substation in Central Electric’s area and restored power to the remaining 6 substations serving Sioux Falls.
9:45 a.m.: WAPA restored power to substations in the Redfield area affecting Northern Electric consumers.
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We will continue to provide updates as they are available.