Electric rates are going up next month in Lawrence, after state regulators and Evergy reached a deal on Tuesday. That’s fitting because 2023 has been a year
photo by: Mike Yoder/Journal-World File Photo
A flock of birds glides over a field east of Evergy s Lawrence Energy Center, on a cold morning, Monday, Feb. 2, 2015.
Earlier this month as rolling power blackouts crawled across Kansas, a couple of numbers stuck in the minds of residents: 20 below zero and 1 hour.
The first was the outside temperature in many parts of the state. The second was the maximum amount of time that Evergy, the state’s largest electric utility, originally had estimated any home would be without power during the winter storm.
Those estimates ended up being wrong. A literal arctic blast across the central U.S. was threatening a figurative meltdown of the region’s power grid. The rolling blackouts planned, temporary outages of power that move from one neighborhood to the next were the main weapon for warding off a collapse of the power grid that stretches from the Dakotas to Texas.