SHREVEPORT, La. -- Historic cold putting historic stress on the power grid forced SWEPCO to enact rolling blackouts for the second day in a row.
"During these extreme temperatures, that demand has been high enough it's exceeded the system's capability to deliver. So we've had to lower that demand," SWEPCO spokesman Peter Main says.
SWEPCO deliberately put sections of customers in the dark for a couple of hours or so, then rolled on to another section to force demand on the power grid down. The ArkLaTex area served by SWEPCO is part of the Southwest Power Pool, which is made up from all or parts of 14 states in the middle of the country.