New generation

The lights went out for many South Car­olini­ans and oth­er con­sumers across the South­east on Christ­mas Eve and Christ­mas Day in 2022. As many fam­i­lies pre­pared for their hol­i­day tra­di­tions, lead­ers in the elec­tric indus­try were work­ing dili­gent­ly to address the like­li­hood of imple­ment­ing planned pow­er out­ages, known as rolling black­outs, as our pow­er grid was pushed to the brink. Let’s talk about why this hap­pened.

This inci­dent was caused by a com­bi­na­tion of extreme, low tem­per­a­tures and a grow­ing pow­er sup­ply cri­sis. This meant, for some, there wasn’t enough elec­tric sup­ply to go around.

The increas­ing con­cern and real­i­ty of gen­er­a­tion short­falls to sup­port the reli­a­bil­i­ty we have promised and pro­vid­ed our mem­bers is on the minds of your co-op’s lead­er­ship, the coop­er­a­tive lead­er­ship through­out our state and coop­er­a­tive lead­er­ship through­out our coun­try. Envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions regard­ing fos­sil fuel gen­er­a­tion are cre­at­ing new road­blocks and chal­lenges as the util­i­ty indus­try works to plan for future elec­tric­i­ty needs and mit­i­gate future emer­gen­cies like we saw last Christ­mas.

York Elec­tric Cooperative’s mem­bers did not expe­ri­ence rolling black­outs, but mil­lions of oth­ers were not as for­tu­nate. Our lead­er­ship team close­ly mon­i­tored the sit­u­a­tion and pre­pared for the worst—to com­mu­ni­cate the need for ser­vice inter­rup­tion dur­ing Christ­mas. This con­ver­sa­tion start­ed before this inci­dent and didn’t stop after we got through the near miss.

Rest assured that our gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion coop­er­a­tive, Cen­tral Elec­tric Pow­er Coop­er­a­tive (CEPCI), is work­ing to coor­di­nate the best solu­tion for reli­able, low-cost pow­er for mem­bers by aggre­gat­ing the best prices and solu­tions for a diver­si­fied port­fo­lio of pow­er gen­er­a­tion.

The North Amer­i­can Elec­tric Reli­a­bil­i­ty Cor­po­ra­tion (NERC), a not-for-prof­it inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty that focus­es on effec­tive and effi­cient reduc­tion of risks to the reli­a­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty of the pow­er grid, reports in their 2022–2023 Win­ter Reli­a­bil­i­ty Assess­ment that our area has a nar­row mar­gin of reserve elec­tric gen­er­a­tion sup­ply in the event of a sig­nif­i­cant win­ter weath­er event. This could result in acquir­ing non-firm assets, or excess gen­er­a­tion that may or may not be avail­able, to make up for the lack of elec­tric sup­ply in the mar­ket.

Addi­tion­al­ly, NERC reports of sup­ply short­ages in two thirds of North Amer­i­ca if tem­per­a­tures spike this sum­mer. Although our area is at a low­er risk for sup­ply short­ages, these assess­ments, cou­pled with our scare this past Christ­mas, show we must find a solu­tion for the grow­ing need for more elec­tric gen­er­a­tion and sup­ply.

In response to these reports, Jim Math­e­son, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer for the Nation­al Rur­al Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive Asso­ci­a­tion (NRECA), sum­ma­rizes and sup­ports the neces­si­ty for action—“America’s abil­i­ty to keep the lights on has been jeop­ar­dized.”

York Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive is a dis­tri­b­u­tion coop­er­a­tive, sup­ply­ing pow­er to over 68,000 homes and busi­ness­es with­in our ser­vice ter­ri­to­ries of York, Chester, Chero­kee and Lan­cast­er coun­ties. Although we don’t gen­er­ate pow­er, we are con­nect­ed and reliant on oth­er util­i­ties to pro­vide pow­er to us so that we can dis­trib­ute it to our mem­bers.

Speak­ing of our mem­bers, you have the pow­er and the abil­i­ty to help reduce the demand for elec­tric­i­ty. Look for more details next month about what we are doing and what you can do to address these con­cerns.

We’re in this together—here at home, through­out our state and as a country—as we work to find solu­tions to the grow­ing need for elec­tric­i­ty to pow­er our lives.