Tens of thousands without power, SWEPCO ’emergency grid protection’

BOSSIER PARISH, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Over 31,000 Caddo and Bossier Parish residents are currently without power due to temporary emergency grid protection outages caused by SWEPCO’s actions to prevent widespread damage to power lines and equipment.

Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) stated the emergency power outage is a “last resort to avoid widespread power loss,” and they do not have an estimated restoration time at this point.

According to SWEPCO, the power outage is mainly concentrated in Bossier Parish.

As of 4:50 p.m., there are 21,849 customers in Bossier Parish without power, 7,671 in Caddo Parish, 213 in Bienville Parish, 26 in DeSoto Parish, seven in Red River Parish, and 810 in Webster Parish.

“The SWEPCO team works with the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) to manage the flow of electricity in our area. SPP required us to take emergency outages in specific areas on the power lines that provide our customers with service. This action was taken to prevent conditions that could cause widespread damage to power lines and equipment that could take days or longer to fix. We are working and coordinating with SPP and will provide additional updates as soon as possible.”

“The outages are primarily affecting customers in Bossier Parish, Louisiana. Please know we always strive to provide our customers with advance notice of an outage whenever possible, and unfortunately that was not possible in this emergency situation. In this instance, our grid operators were instructed to take immediate action, which did not give us time to inform you before the outage occurred.”
SWEPCO statement.

They state, ‘when SWEPCO gets word from SPP that the controlled outages have reduced power to bring balance back to the overall energy delivery system, then the controlled outages can end.’

According to their FAQ page, SWEPCO would temporarily disconnect power to these circuits and, when possible, rotate to another group of circuits to limit the impact at any one location for one to two hours.

“SPP serves as the Balancing Authority and Reliability Coordinator for a 14-state region that includes SWEPCO’s service territory in portions of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas,” said SWEPCO’s communications representative.

She said ‘this is a step only taken as a last resort when it’s necessary to mitigate the risk of longer-lasting and wider-spread uncontrolled outages. In these rare occasions, SPP coordinates with local utilities to temporarily reduce the amount of aggregate electricity being consumed in an area for only as long as is required to maintain regional grid reliability.’  

To see the SWEPCO Outage Map visit here.

This is a developing story.