Hurricane Michael
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Friday, October 12, 2018
- Weather: Tropical Storm Michael moved rapidly through Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia yesterday with heavy rainfall and up to 65 mile-per-hour winds extending 275 miles from the center before entering the Atlantic Ocean this morning.
- Electricity: The hurricane’s impact can be most clearly seen in the TAL (City of Tallahassee) balancing authority (BA), where load remains very low but is showing signs of recovery. Loads yesterday and today in other BAs, including DUK and CPLE in the Carolinas (see p. 7-8), were slightly lower than previous days; however, a steep drop in temperatures overnight partially obscures the impact of recovery efforts on load.
- Generators: Both reactors at the 1,751-megawatt Farley nuclear plant in Alabama reported about 55% capacity availability this morning, up from 30% yesterday morning.
- Customer outages, as of 1:00 p.m.: About 452,000 customers in Virginia (roughly 12% of the state); 410,000 customers in North Carolina (8%); 280,000 customers in Florida (3%); 146,000 customers in Georgia (3%); 23,000 customers in Alabama (1%); and 3,000 customers in South Carolina (<1%). Recovery is underway, but outages remain in the areas with the most severe (Florida and Georgia) and recent (North Carolina and Virginia) impacts.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
- Weather: Hurricane Michael downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved northeast across central Georgia last night and this morning. Storm surge in the Florida panhandle continues to recede. Michael is producing heavy rainfall and up to 50 mile-per-hour winds in South and North Carolina. The storm is projected to move into the Atlantic Ocean tonight.
- Electricity: Load dropped sharply yesterday afternoon in the TAL (City of Tallahassee) balancing authority (BA) as Hurricane Michael passed nearby. Loads in AEC and SOCO, which together cover most of Georgia, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle, declined through Thursday morning; however, because these BAs cover large areas outside of the hurricane’s path, the impact of the storm on their overall load is less pronounced than in TAL.
- Generators: As of this morning, the 1,751-megawatt Farley nuclear plant in Alabama reported 30% capacity availability.
- Customer outages, as of 6:00 p.m.: About 484,000 customers in North Carolina (roughly 9% of the state); 381,000 customers in Florida (4%); 214,000 customers in Georgia (4%); 108,000 customers in Virginia (3%); 35,000 customers in South Carolina (1%); and 38,000 customers in Alabama (2%). The outages from Hurricane Michael are heavily concentrated in a narrow band compared to Hurricane Florence’s wider impacts.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
- Weather: Hurricane Michael made landfall today in the Florida panhandle. The Category 4 storm has sustained winds up to 125 miles per hour and hurricane-force winds extending up to 40 miles from the center. Cumulative rainfall in the impacted parts of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia are expected to total four to eight inches.
- Electricity: Forecast and actual peak loads for the SOCO and AEC balancing authorities (BAs), which cover most of Georgia, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle, have declined over the past two days as the hurricane approached. The impact of the hurricane is most apparent in the TAL (City of Tallahassee) BA, where reported demand has fallen far short of forecast.
- Generators: Southern Company announced that it began reducing output at the 1,751-megawatt Farley nuclear plant in southeastern Alabama today. This was described as a precautionary measure made in anticipation of the possible arrival of hurricane-force winds.
- Customer outages, as of 6:00 p.m.: About 388,000 customers in Florida, 46,000 customers in Georgia, and 45,000 customers in Alabama have reported electricity outages, roughly 3.7%, 0.9%, and 1.7% of the customers in the states, respectively. Outage numbers are expected to rise as the storm moves inland.