More than half of Memphis Light, Gas and Water’s customers have been impacted by mandatory rolling blackouts over the past two days, according to President Doug McGowen. 

“Should we have continued this work throughout the next 24 hours, all of our customers would have experienced a blackout of some variety or another,” McGowen said. 

The Tennessee Valley Authority enacted mandatory rolling blackouts among its 153 local power companies on Friday morning, Dec. 23. The historic move was made as the TVA saw a record power demand. 

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This is the first time the TVA or MLGW have had to curtail its power using rolling blackouts. 

This tactic requires local power companies, like MLGW, to reduce their power load to avoid widespread outages across the TVA’s service area. 

MLGW’s requirement to enforce rolling blackouts has been off and on since it was first announced Friday morning, but as of noon Saturday, MLGW is not under an order to mandate any additional blackouts. 

McGowen said TVA shared a low probability of rolling blackouts over the remainder of the holiday weekend, but that is subject to change at any time — and MLGW won’t have much notice. 

“We understand that there was anger, confusion and frustration about the changing plans,” he said. “It is difficult to make a forecast when you have little notice to initiate that plans, and even less notice about changing that plan to a larger outage.” 

What started off as a 5% reduction requirement turned into a 10% reduction on Saturday morning. MLGW had to double its load reduction, so the blackouts affected a large area than originally expected. 

The blackouts also lasted for longer than the expected 30 minute intervals. Under normal conditions, MLGW can turn circuits on and off remotely, but the utility faced about an 80% success rate during extreme weather.

It was necessary for employees to visit the substations for manual breaker resets. 

When McGowen stepped to the mic for a press conference at noon, about 23,000 customers were without power, and about half of those will be restored once the breakers are reset. 

The rest will be improved throughout the course of the day, he said. 

“Once we are out of these conditions, we will be conducting further reviews of the causes and actions,” TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks said. “But nothing could change the weather event that is impacting the entire country.”