As we’ve discussed, there was a critical need to balance the electric grid, which caused an immediate need to respond. The situation on the night of Feb. 16 evolved so quickly that Cooperative Energy had to initiate outages before Dixie Electric and other electric cooperatives were notified.
Ideally, members would be asked to conserve electric energy, and that rolling outages were a possibility. Unfortunately, the notice to reduce energy use and the need for rolling outages came back-to-back with little time to inform the public on Feb. 16, 2021.