**THIS REQUEST HAS BEEN CANCELED**
We are pleased to share that after a long night of hard work, AEP Transmission has been fully restored, and all NCE substations are fully operational. This means that, while we still encourage members to watch their energy use during the next few days of hot weather, there is no longer an urgent concern regarding excess electricity use or a need for immediate load shedding.
THANK YOU to our Engineering and Operations teams who worked with AEP to identify and get other solutions in place to restore full power to our system. And an additional thank you to all of you who helped conserve energy last night into this morning, and marked a measurable decrease in power consumption.
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Due to an AEP transmission issue following the severe storms that rolled through the North Central Electric service territory on June 18, which is outside of the cooperative’s control, NCE is asking its members to reduce load for the next several days in order to help stabilize the system.
The AEP Transmission point failure is currently affecting three of NCE’s 12 distribution substations, covering roughly one-third of the cooperative’s service territory. At this point in time, AEP has notified the cooperative that they are likely looking at a minimum two-day time frame before the transmission point failure has been repaired.
While NCE is currently backfeeding members from other substations, the cooperative has reached maximum output, meaning that NCE is unable to shift power in any other direction or increase the load on these other distribution points. This will become an issue as the weather heats up and demand for electricity increases over the next couple of days.
The cooperative is asking for members' help to control this excess demand by shedding load wherever possible. Some ways members can help includes:
- Limiting the use of air conditioners
- Increasing the temperature of thermostats slightly
- Delaying large appliance uses like washers and dryers
- Keeping all unnecessary power sources off where possible
Additionally, members with home generators may consider using this source of power where and when possible. Failure to shed load on the system and reduce demand could result in forced load shedding on the cooperative’s end, which is a last resort step that NCE wishes to avoid.
While backfeeding is a great benefit of NCE’s distribution system, it is not meant for prolonged use at such a high level. Using some of these tools, and more, to help limit the load on the system is beneficial to all of our members, especially as AEP works to repair the transmission issue. We will also continue to work with AEP on other possible fixes to get the grid back to full capacity quicker.