OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – The idea of saving energy was not just addressed to homeowners on Monday and Tuesday. Businesses that use a lot of power have been asked to do the same.
For example, 6 News changed the transmitter for our electricity tower here, and none of us are out of the woods yet.
Power issues grew rapidly. Yesterday we started getting calls from Bellevue homeowners.
“I heard neighbor after neighbor came out of power,” said a Bellevue homeowner.
Ten thousand customers lost power on Monday. Then, on Tuesday, the OPPD shut down more electricity to help ease the pressure on a Texas-North-Dakota network ready to explode during record cold.
Neighborhoods from Elkhorn to Pepperwood and 90th and Dodge saw their lights go out. The continuous outage intentionally took out 72,000 customers during the various parts of the morning, for just over an hour each. The panel even hit the home of Tim Burke, the head of Omaha’s public power district.
“There is no preferential treatment there,” said OPPD spokesman Jodi Baker.
But, as 6 News found out, some neighborhoods lost their power and others did not.
Why? The short answer is: it depends.
Those with the OPPD and the NPPD say they are paying attention to critical places where power is essential, such as schools, prisons, 911 centers, police stations, fire stations, nursing homes and hospitals. If you live near one of these places, you may have taken a break.
While many of these examples have generators because they never know when a tornado or squirrel could damage a transformer, policymakers are working to mitigate the impact.
“We are in a fragile situation again,” said Tom Kent, CEO of the NPPD.
With the possibility of several interruptions for Tuesday night and until Wednesday, those who run the electricity companies understand the difficult position they put on their customers.
“There’s no way to say, ‘OK, at 8 in the morning, we’ll stop.’ Think of it as a tornado or an ice storm: this is an emergency, and when that happens, our operators take steps to ensure that the reliability of the system does not deteriorate to the point of uncontrolled and widespread outage. Said Kent.
6 The news has been told that if there are several interruptions, on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, they will try to target neighborhoods that have not previously lost power – but there may be no way around you to lose power again.
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