Rolling blackouts affect 130,000 homes, businesses By: Kathryn McNutt The Journal Record February 16, 2021
Drivers make their way along a road during a winter storm in Oklahoma City. Snow and ice blanketed large swaths of the U.S. on Sunday, prompting canceled flights, making driving perilous and reaching into areas as far south as Texas’ Gulf Coast. (AP photo/Sue Ogrocki)
OKLAHOMA CITY – Rolling blackouts enacted Tuesday morning to ease the extreme demand for heat and electricity affected more than 130,000 homes and businesses in Oklahoma, where a state of emergency remains in effect for all 77 counties.
Utility companies implemented the one- to two-hour blackouts at the direction of the Southwest Power Pool, which controls generation and transmission in a 14-state area. SPP said the outages were “a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.”