ILEC Pres. & CEO Addresses Concerns Over Electric Reliability
ILEC Pres. & CEO Addresses Concerns Over Electric Reliability
June 10, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– There’s growing concern that weather events, a decline in generating capacity, and other factors this summer could cause issues with electric reliability. There have even been reports that some parts of the country could be faced with rolling blackouts as a result. Tim McCullough, President and CEO of Estherville-based Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative tells KUOO news the potential of something like that happening in our area isn’t nearly as great, but he is concerned…
“There’s an organization called MISO that regulates and does the energy markets in central Iowa, to the east and south. That specifically, that market, is at high risk. They did an assessment for the summer ahead of us and in that market there is not enough generation to meet the expected demand for parts of that footprint. There’s a number of factors that’s involved there. In our specific footprint for Iowa Lakes Electric customers, that’s the Southwest Power Pool, there IS enough generation to cover anticipated loads.”
McCullough is quick to point out, however, that could quickly change should there be some sort of catastrophic event…
“Many of our members regionally remember Winter Storm Yuri from last February of 2021 where we had an extreme weather event that impacted power generation and gas supply across our region and we did have for the first time rolling blackouts to keep the electric grid stable so we didn’t have a grid-wide blackout. That type of risk for extreme weather events still exists today. But going into the summer and this next peak season there is information to show that we have enough generation to meet supply. So it’s a moderate risk, but it’s not a high risk as it is in other parts of the country.”
McCullough adds some other issues could also come into play with reliability…
“Now we’re seeing both inflationary cost increases; we’re seeing production constraints from labor and other reasons. All that together our lead times are longer and our costs have gone up. And if we were to have a widespread weather event that demands a lot of equipment to rebuild, we could see shortages in materials. That can impact reliability we well. We’re hedging against that with Iowa Lakes Electric with our cooperative ownership of some of our suppliers. We’re buying ahead to have supply on hand to hedge against weather events. And so that’s a risk that’s there that we’re doing our best within our power to hedge against supply chain risks. But the reality is that it’s taking longer to buy things and things are just generally more expensive. Just like all of the listeners here and our members are feeling: fuel’s up, inputs are up, and costs are up. You feel that every day and that’s true for what it costs to produce electricity as well.”
McCullough says ILEC will do what they can to alert member-owners as soon as possible in the event of any potential blackouts or other issues.
