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TVA 10 Years After the Blackout

627 views · Published 14 August 2013 · 2:44 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: WTVC NewsChannel 9 · 2013 · News & Politics

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Ten years ago today, about 50 million people were left in the dark. Tennessee was spared, but since then, The Tennessee Valley Authority is working hard to make sure it never hits home.The events of August 14th, 2003 are known as the worst blackout in US History. The Northeast Blackout was sparked by a tree touching high-voltage power lines in Ohio, shorting out power and electricity to eight states.In the reliability operations center in Chattanooga, these workers are responsible for the electrical systems in more than 11 states. That means TVA watches over 9 million customers. So as you can imagine, they have a huge responsibility.It was a fairly high load day for TVA that day but we were managing to meet our load with no problems. We had no significant issues on our system. Really the first indication we saw was the frequency started to swing pretty heavily. The generators started tripping, and then of course once the load, once the loss, we saw a significant spike up in our frequency, says TVA'S Reliability Operation Manager Joel Wise.  That's when 50 million customers were left in the dark. The blackout darkened computer screens, halted transportation from Michigan to New England and even cut out power to hospitals, power plants and prisons.As all of us in the electric industry we've learned is that regional liability is important. It can have a huge impact not only those local to the event, it can have huge impacts on those people that aren't even responsible in the area of the event, says TVA'S Interregional Operations General Manager Armando Rodriguez.Wise says since 2007, new requirements have been put into place to ensure nothing like this anywhere in the country. If they don't comply, TVA could face penalties of $1 million dollars per day.  But even though Wise says today's systems are better managed, there's still a small chance of a strike.Weather is one of the big impacts on our system. If you remember back to the 2011 April tornado events really devastated parts of the Tennessee Valley newsroom had a huge impact. So, it's definitely one of the of the things we keep an eye on, says WiseAnother factor that could put strain on the system, shorter operating hours during certain times of the year.A lot of times when companies are taking a lot of facilities out during what we call the shorter months and the fall, the system can be a little more vulnerable at that time but that's our job to ensure that these outages can be taken without creating any reliability impacts, says Wise.TVA sells power over a span of 80 thousand miles. That's 16 thousand circuit miles of transmission lines.By Alyssa Spirato

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