Local utilities: No outages reported
Published 2:00 am Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Despite the freezing rain and cutting wind, no outages were reported late Sunday and early Monday.
Covington Electric Cooperative spokesperson Patty Singleton-Seay said the cooperative had no reported outages.
The same can be said for the Andalusia Utilities.
“We haven’t had the first call or anything since Saturday morning,” said Jeff Puckett, electric operations manager. “We had a primary line to burn down and cause some problems in the Brewton sub.”
Puckett said that did cause a few issues Saturday, but it didn’t take long to get things back in working order.
On the transmission front, PowerSouth’s Communication Manager Mark Ingram said people cranking up heaters to ward off the cold, proved to be no problem for the plant.
“Sunday’s peak was 1,629 mega-watts, and Monday’s a.m. peak was 1,548 mega-watts,” he said. “According to energy services, we should actually peak later (Monday) after noon for our daily peak. We are estimating around 1,625 megawatts.”
Ingram said the projected peak for Thursday morning is 2,089 megawatts and Friday is expected to bring a slightly higher peak of 2,105 megawatts.
Those numbers are slightly lower than the all-time high system peak of 2,382 megawatts, which was recorded Jan., 11, 2010.
A megawatt is equivalent to one million watts of power. PowerSouth’s system meets the needs of 16 electric cooperatives and four municipal electric systems in Alabama and northwest Florida, including Andalusia Utilities, Covington Electric Cooperative and the City of Opp, who also reported no outages.