Again, thank you to all who have worked to conserve power.
In the 80+ year history of Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA), there has never been a need to shed load in order to stabilize the power grid. This is unprecedented. The City of Siloam Springs is working with GRDA and Southwestern Power Pool (SPP) to take the necessary precautions to avoid long-lasting outages. These temporary scheduled outages are a preventative measure. When electricity is on, please do your part to conserve power.
City of Siloam Springs electric customers may continue to experience controlled interruptions of service that will persist for approximately 45 minutes per rotation. Please continue to prepare. Unfortunately, we do not have a map of rotations, nor do we know when outages are coming.
When GRDA receives notice from SPP the system operations desk has approximately 5 minutes to make determinations about which GRDA delivery points will be interrupted. This can vary greatly depending on the size of load GRDA is being requested to shed. GRDA will be forced to interrupt service at the request of SPP in order to balance generation and load and maintain system stability, across the region.
SPP is the agency that manages the electric grid and wholesale power market for 14 states in the central US. GRDA is the provider through whom the City of Siloam Springs purchases power.
SPP declared an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA Level 3) because its operating reserves were below the required minimum.