KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City area’s largest utility provider says its system remains reliable as the region enters the third-straight day of sweltering temps.
On Monday morning, the Southwest Power Pool, a regional organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas, that helps to balance electric demand and generation among member utilities - including Evergy - issued a Conservative Operations Advisory.
SPP has declared a Conservative Operations Advisory for 8/21 from 11 am - 9 pm CT. SPP and its member utilities will operate the grid conservatively to mitigate risks associated with system conditions. SPP is not asking the public to conserve energy. https://t.co/66SGAJDfaE pic.twitter.com/wvDgNsc7ce
— Southwest Power Pool (@SPPorg) August 21, 2023
The advisory, which runs through 9 p.m. Monday night, doesn’t require the public to conserve energy, but instead provides a reminder to transmission and generating facilities that there are potential threats to electricity reliability. Specifically, the advisory was issued due to continued high load due to extreme heat and low wind forecast.
One of the ways utility providers like Evergy prepare for times of high demand is to perform maintenance to power plants, transmission and distribution systems during times of more mild weather.
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“While we have seen some outages over the past few days, it’s been within normal expectations for extremely hot weather,” Evergy senior Vice President and chief customer officer Chuck Caisley said in a release. “Crews are working quickly to restore power when outages occur.”
As of noon Monday, Evergy’s outage map did not show any widespread outages.
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Prior to issuing a conservative operations advisory Monday, the SPP over the weekend had already issued resource advisory that remains in effect until 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25, and a weather advisory that is currently set to run through 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 23.
More information about the regional grid conditions is available on SPP’s website.
Employees working to keep the power flowing inside power plants and repairs to outages often face even higher temperatures. Inside a power plant, that can mean employees face actual temperatures higher than the heat index value outside.
“We appreciate our employees who are working to keep power plans running 24/7 through the heat,” Evergy said Monday morning.
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