It took the Tennessee Valley Authority 90 years to build its current electric grid, but the utility will need to double — or maybe even triple — the amount of power it can generate over the next 30 years to keep up with its customers’ needs. 

And Memphians know what happens when TVA can’t keep up with demand for electricity.

It’s why some people in Shelby County spent last Christmas in the dark as an ice storm — dubbed Winter Storm Elliott — swept through the region. TVA was struggling to keep pace with power demand across its seven-state footprint.

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During a 24-hour period last December, TVA supplied more energy than it has at any other time in its history.

All 153 local power companies that buy energy from TVA, including Memphis Light, Gas and Water, were asked to urge customers to cut back. In the end, though, TVA systematically cut customers’ power to prevent the entire grid from collapsing. 

It was the first time Memphis experienced rolling blackouts, but now, it’s a race against the clock for TVA to avoid a repeat of those events. 

Demand for electricity is a year-round challenge 

Between 2020 and 2022 — after nearly a decade of flat growth — TVA’s electric demand increased 2.5%. 

High demand isn’t limited to winter months, though. Summer 2022 was the hottest on record for Memphis, and TVA hit record demand for the month of June that year. 

The TVA board approved a rate hike last month to fund $15 billion worth of investments over the next three years, from upgrading the current system to adding more power to its grid. 

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

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“The direction and investments TVA is making now are rooted in the realities of the energy demand around us,” Lyash said in a statement. 

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

Consumer demand is up partially due to increasingly volatile weather, which creates more demand for heat in the winter and for more air conditioning in scorching summer months. But it also comes from the rapid electrification of the transportation sector.

Memphis and West Tennessee should see the economic benefits of building electric cars, but the transition from fossil-fueled cars with internal combustion engines to EVs adds even further demand to the power grid. 

As grids struggle, TVA leans on neighbors 

TVA is not the only utility in a time crunch. 

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, urged its 25 million customers to conserve energy seven times in August. It was a last-ditch effort to avoid widespread outages.

According to the Texas Tribune, ERCOT avoided rolling blackouts. 

MLGW will send a similar message to its customers during extreme summer and winter weather, but in cases like Winter Storm Elliott, voluntary cutbacks from customers weren’t enough to avoid rolling blackouts.

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When record heat or cold sprawls across the entire central U.S., the neighboring grids that will sell power to TVA — the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Southern Company and PJM Interconnection — are fighting to meet demand, too. It happened last winter, when other utilities and power grids were feeling the same pressure as TVA.

That limits TVA’s ability to buy additional power should it need it. 

Two weeks ago, when triple-digit temperatures caused the highest energy demand of the summer, data showed TVA’s system was not keeping up with demand. It needed about 31,000 megawatts of power on Aug. 24. When its own production fell about 4,000 megawatts short, TVA closed the gap by buying power from MISO and Southern Company, according to Energy Information Administration data. 

Simon Mahan, the executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association, said TVA, like other utilities, now needs to generate much more electricity and lean on other utilities in the process.

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“It’s a race to get generation built,” Mahan said. “The bottom line is, if they can’t get enough generation built, and we’re not expanding the transmission system to our neighbors, we’re going to have a rough time serving the power needs of the Tennessee Valley.” 

The race to meet demand for electricity runs smack into the push to decarbonize the grid and curtail the country’s use of fossil fuels. With higher demand, utilities across the U.S. are lengthening the life spans of plants planned for retirement. 

Utilities are thinking long-term 

TVA has kicked off the process of studying its long-term power needs, through a process known as an integrated resource plan. MLGW did one just a few years ago when it was considering leaving the TVA system.

Mahan said that plan is essential to the long-term power needs of the valley and should include a diverse array of energy sources, including power that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels and is impervious to weather.

Some TVA equipment froze during Winter Storm Elliott and some of its gas infrastructure went offline, making it even harder for the energy provider to meet the electricity needs of its customers. Without importing energy from other grids, Mahan said Elliott could have been a lot worse for TVA.

“We’re starting to see more and more that the assumption that natural gas is 100% reliable just isn’t true, either for the wintertime, and we’re also starting to see it in the summertime as well,” Mahan said.

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MLGW is eyeing a more diverse energy mix, too. In August, MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowen said the utility is taking steps toward its first-ever utility-scale solar power and battery storage.

“This investment will not only improve grid resiliency in Western Tennessee but will pave the way for installation of more solar, battery and other distributed energy resources without impacting the reliability and quality of power that we all expect,” McGowen said at the time.

Earlier this year, McGowen unveiled a timeline to establish a 20-year plan for MLGW, dubbed “MLGW2045: Powering Communities for our Future.” The utility already has a five-year, $1 billion infrastructure investment plan, but if Shelby County wants to be prepared for a rapidly changing energy market, McGowen said it needs to think further ahead.

Memphis’s energy future 

McGowen is among those who spearheaded the city’s comprehensive plan known as Memphis 3.0. The plan, published in 2018, includes a climate action section, which aims to cut carbon emissions 70% by 2050 and offers solutions to prepare for more extreme weather.

Now, five years later, many of the things the city warned of in Memphis 3.0 have happened. But many of the proposed solutions have not.

MLGW and TVA have worked on making homes more energy efficient, which is crucial in limiting energy demand. However, those programs have only changed energy demand for a small number of households. 

Whoever leads the city next will be in a position to make critical decisions about how Memphis withstands coming challenges. 

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Memphis 3.0 looked at three areas as part of its climate action plan: energy, transportation and waste. 

Memphians have one of the highest energy burdens in the country; they spend more of their household income on energy than most people, in part because of old, inefficient homes.  

Mayoral candidates Floyd Bonner, Karen Camper, Van Turner and Paul Young have all agreed with the city’s climate action plan and support more diverse energy sources. 

“We need to increase the diversity by which we source power and distribute power,” Turner said. “We should equip homes, neighborhoods and communities with mini self-sustaining solar farms to supplement and supplant power supply when the main system is compromised.” 

However, the city’s utility is also already eyeing more renewable energy to ensure it can keep the lights on. Recently, McGowen confirmed MLGW’s plans to explore solar energy, and the utility is planning on enough battery storage to power 100,000 homes for four hours during outages.