At one point during mid-January’s winter storm, Memphis Light, Gas and Water reported there was just one single customer without power.

For a city that’s grown accustomed to power outages during severe weather — as well as sometimes on fair-weather days — it seemed impossible that only one customer could be without power as several inches of snow blanketed the city and MLGW’s power supplier, the Tennessee Valley Authority, was seeing record demand from energy customers. 

These all-terrain angels braved icy roads to help health care workers

But, through a combination of voluntary energy conservation and somewhat recent infrastructure improvements, the city weathered the storm with minimal power outages.

It was a welcome change after the past few years, which brought a barrage of storms and, with them, a barrage of power troubles. So, how did it happen?

Record demand 

Even before it started to snow, Shelby County held its collective breath for the coming weather.

Days before, MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowen warned the public that TVA’s ability to supply enough power was his biggest concern, calling it “uncharted territory in this part of the country.”

When temperatures swing to extremes, power demand skyrockets, and there are more than 10 million people across TVA’s footprint. It supplies power to all of Tennessee as well as parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia.

Memphis housing doesn’t help when it comes to extreme temps

MLGW is its biggest customer, though, accounting for about 10% of TVA’s load.

Within a couple days of the storm beginning, MLGW and TVA both asked customers to conserve power in whatever ways they could to help them navigate a period of extremely high demand.

TVA ended up supplying more power during the storm — from Monday, Jan. 15, to Sunday, Jan. 21 — than during any other week in its 90-year history.

The day after the conservation order started, TVA set a record for the most power supplied in its history. It supplied 34,524 megawatts of energy the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 17.

That’s more than 1,000 megawatts more power than TVA supplied during an ice storm last winter, but that storm ended in rolling blackouts — a first for Memphis — because TVA couldn’t keep up with demand.

Water is Memphis’ new weather problem. What can be done to fix it?

This time around, Memphis dealt with relatively small clusters of outages, ranging from a couple hundred to a couple thousand customers without power.

“I want everybody to know that your efforts worked,” McGowen told the Memphis City Council on Jan. 23, during an update after the storm. “You helped to blunt the impact of rising electric demand.”

A few days later, but without a conservation order in place, TVA set another record with minimal outages. On Sunday, Jan. 21, TVA supplied just a couple hundred megawatts less than the record set earlier in the week, marking its second-highest power demand ever.

TVA’s top five dates for record power demand are now all in the winter — a notable statistic since there were no winter records on that list a few years ago.

“What that’s telling you is that the winters over the last few years are getting colder for longer,” McGowen said.

Rainy weather plus frozen ground creates potential flood risk

Reversing the run to fail mindset 

The records set for energy demand during this storm went unnoticed by many Memphians because there were minimal power outages. Most people were dealing with the impact to the city’s water infrastructure instead. 

It was a stark contrast to last winter, when an ice storm left more than half the city in the dark for days.

There have been some big changes since that storm, including rate hikes from both TVA and MLGW and infrastructure upgrades.

McGowen, who took his post just a couple weeks before the December 2022 storm that ended in rolling blackouts, has repeatedly said MLGW underinvested in its infrastructure for decades.

“Effectively, the organization devolved over time to a ‘run to fail’ operation, fixing things only after they broke,” McGowen said in an annual report to city and county officials earlier this month. 

Preparing for extreme weather and other ‘disruptive events’

It’s the reason given for MLGW customers losing power twice as often as they did a couple of decades ago, and when it’s gone out in recent years, it stays out three times as long. 

Tree trimming has been the biggest cause of those outages, and MLGW hasn’t met its tree-trimming goals in decades. McGowen has since fired the old contractor and hired three new companies to get back on schedule.

Historically, MLGW’s goal has been to trim trees away from power lines over three years before starting over. By the end of last year, it was back on schedule, and McGowen asked the new companies to move even faster, which they’ll start doing this spring. 

Memphians also felt the effects of old infrastructure during December 2022.

When TVA ordered MLGW to start rolling blackouts, it flipped the breakers off remotely. But when it was time to turn the breakers back on after what was supposed to be a brief interruption, MLGW ran into a problem.

‘Snow Day’ has different meaning for essential services

Some of the circuit breakers had frozen, so MLGW had to send crews out to fix them, leaving customers without power for longer than expected during an ice storm.

MLGW has since winterized the breakers, using a technique McGowen likened to antifreeze. 

It’s one of many fixes MLGW has made since last year’s storm to prep its infrastructure for extreme weather, but there’s much more it needs to do. 

Becoming more self-reliant

After a recent rate hike, MLGW customers will pay 12% more for power over the next three years. McGowen said the increase, which will fund about $1.2 billion of power grid fixes over the next five years, was necessary to make up for decades of underinvestment and keep pace with inflation.

“The rolling blackouts of late 2022 were a wakeup call for many,” McGowen said in the annual report to city and county officials.

Is Memphis ready to weather the winter?

For McGowen, that storm showed that Memphis needs to generate power locally, which it hasn’t done since the 1950s.

MLGW pitched a short-lived plan to build aeroderivative turbines — a type of gas-powered engine. It stemmed from a plan TVA introduced last summer that would’ve required all industrial customers using more than five megawatts of power to be forced offline when TVA faced high energy demand, such as in mid-January.

McGowen feared that plan would have a negative effect on local economic development and send industrial customers to other places that wouldn’t cut their power off when the grid was strained. So, he pitched the idea of buying $120 million of gas-powered turbines.

He saw it as a way to generate enough power to keep those industrial customers online when TVA cut their power off. But then, TVA said it seemed less likely they’d need to force industrial users to decrease consumption since the utility added nearly 1,500 megawatts of natural gas to the grid. McGowen scrapped the aeroderivative turbine plan from MLGW’s budget the night before the City Council was set to vote. 

Just because it wasn’t approved in this year’s budget doesn’t mean McGowen has ditched the idea completely. He’s already moving forward with plans for solar power to help during periods of peak demand.

TVA hits record power demand

“With increasing weather extremes, we have to be more self-reliant,” McGowen told the Memphis City Council in an update after the storm. “I want to emphasize that: Everyone — whether it’s an MLGW issue or another issue that we’re facing — has to be more self-reliant.” 

TVA looks to double — or triple — power generation

As MLGW is focusing on bolstering its infrastructure and generating some of its own power, TVA also has made infrastructure improvements across its seven-state service area.

In the year since an ice storm led to rolling blackouts, TVA has invested $123 million to ready the grid for extreme weather and added more power to its fleet, the utility said in a statement. This year, TVA said it’ll invest another $120 million to make the system more reliable.

Compared to the last storm, when some of TVA’s biggest sources of power went offline, it said only 3% of its total fleet was unavailable during peak demand and any problems were fixed within a few hours.

“Our focus was to make the critical investments needed to meet growing electricity demand while maintaining low rates that will ensure our region’s energy security as we move to a clean energy future,” said Aaron Melda, TVA’s senior vice president of power supply operations.

In from the cold: TVA shows off Allen Plant improvements

It’s no easy task as TVA estimates it needs to double, or maybe triple, its power supply over the next three decades to keep up with demand for energy. 

The federal power provider said it plans to add 3,800 megawatts to the grid in the next five years to keep up with demand. That’s the equivalent of adding another Memphis to TVA, and then some. 

A few months before MLGW increased its power rates, TVA did the same. It’ll cost customers a few extra dollars each month to fund $15 billion of improvements over the next three years.

CEO Jeff Lyash previously said the utility’s moving at “a speed unlike any other time in TVA history.” 

As TVA plans for that rapid growth, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen said the power provider’s customers need more opportunities to provide input. He’s planning to introduce legislation that ensures TVA considers resilience, extreme weather and public health in its process, he said Thursday, Jan. 25.

TVA power demand could hit record high by Wednesday, affecting Memphis

“Memphis and Tennessee residents will be greatly affected by (TVA’s infrastructure improvements), which will impact utility bills, air and water quality, local jobs and whether the lights stay on during extreme weather for years to come,” Cohen said. 

Taken together, local and federal leaders are hoping the energy upgrades will position Shelby County to weather future storms the same way it did this past one — with only a small number of outages. 

“We are transforming our electric and water systems,” McGowen said. “We are making investments here to meet these changing weather demands.”