HUNTSVILLE — The Tennessee Valley Authority said it “fell short” over the weekend in ordering the rolling blackouts during once-in-a-generation low temperatures.
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) has joined the chorus of lawmakers and TVA customers in criticizing the federal utility for the outages Saturday as the area was facing extremely cold temperatures.
“The cold streak that we’ve had over the last week, that’s happened before,” Brooks said Wednesday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Show.” “So we’ve had those kind of demands on our electricity supply, people trying to heat their homes, keep their pipes from bursting and everything else.
“The TVA should have been prepared for it.”
TVA CEO Jeff Lyash said his agency was at fault.
“It is TVA’s very objective and that of our local power companies, each and every one of those 153 local power companies, never to interrupt your power,” he said in a conference call with elected officials from TVA’s seven-state service area. “That’s what we strive for. And occasionally we fall short of that.
“And, obviously, we fell short of that, in this case.”
Lyash also blamed the utility for poorly communicating the situation with the local companies – including Huntsville Utilities, Decatur Utilities, Florence Electric, Joe Wheeler Electric, Scottsboro Electric, and others in North Alabama.
He said the TVA is also concerned about the failure of equipment – including the loss of coal and natural gas plants – that was supposedly upgraded to handle extreme cold temperatures.
“I would tell you all as leaders, we have already begun to scope our post-event critical assessment,” he said. “I will tell you I think communications from TVA to local power companies, to local officials, industrial customers could have been better and there are gaps there.”
Brooks said the event was not something that was out of TVA’s control.
“You know when there’s a natural disaster like when he had the tornadoes blowing through about a decade ago and the lines were down, there’s not anything the TVA or anybody else can do about that,” he said. “But heat waves, cold freezing weather, those are the kinds of things that happen.”
Brooks said the utility’s statement on the blackouts sounded “Orwellian.”
“I just rolled my eyes,” he said. “Because if I recall correctly, and I’m going to paraphrase, but the quote was from the TVA, ‘We have to have rolling blackouts in order to ensure reliable electricity delivery.’ I’m going, ‘Wait a second, The very definition of unreliability is when you cut it off’ … I just rolled my eyes, it was George Orwellian.”
Brooks said this is just another example of a government-run enterprise not being as capable as a private company.
“They’re not as capable as the private sector because the private sector is risking its own money,” he said. “You’ve got people who could go bankrupt if they’re not good at what they do. The federal government, all they do is increase taxes, or they cut off delivery, or they raise rates, depending on what the government service may be.
“So they are much less apt to dot the i’s, cross the t’s, use good judgement than the private sector is, and that’s one of the reason the private sector has worked so well and socialism has not.”
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