Morgan City keeps power in the cold

The city of Morgan City has been spared any electrical issues so far from the winter weather that affected the area in recent days.
“We didn’t have any power problems,” Utilities Director Bill Cefalu said. “Ice built up on a few trees that have branches kind of just hanging a little lower than normal, and we just put some insulators over the wires for right now.”
The trees will be trimmed after the weather subsides.
Morgan City has not had to institute any rolling blackouts, Cefalu said.
If it was forced to shed electricity, Cefalu said, the city can meet the requirements in outages lasting no more than 15 minutes.
If the city lost its tie in with Cleco, it could rely on help from Entergy for assistance. If Cleco was out of service, and Entergy was unable to help the city, it would have access to the 72-megawatt plant with ownership by six Louisiana Energy and Power Authority cities in Morgan City. Morgan City owns 12 of the plants’ megawatts.
“But no matter what and who owns it, if for some reason we got disconnected from the Cleco tie, that plant would still service the city,” Cefalu said. “But that’s all it would service.”
Elsewhere, Cleco reported Thursday morning that just 15 St. Mary Parish customers were without power.
Cleco, as well as South Louisiana Electric Cooperative Association, urged their customers to reduce power usage Wednesday night during peak hours, which conclude at 10 p.m.
“Though we are not anticipating our area to have temperatures as cold as it has been, other parts of Louisiana are experiencing extreme cold weather with icy conditions, which is causing a high demand for electricity in the state,” SLECA said in its Facebook post.
To avoid rolling blackouts, SLECA said its customers should lower their thermostats to 68 degrees, close shades and blinds to minimize heat exiting windows, turn off and unplug all appliances and lights that are not essential and avoid using large appliances, including ovens, washing machines and dishwashers.
Cleco said in a press release that customers should continue conserving energy until further notice.
“Conserving energy now could help keep the lights on later,” Cleco Director of Corporate Communications Jenn-ifer Cahill said in a news release Wedn-esday. “If the power supply cannot meet the demand, periodic power outages could be needed to protect the stability of the power grid and prevent widespread lengthy outages.
“Yesterday, we took the unprecedented step, as directed by MISO, to force outages across parts of our service territory,” Cahill added. “This is only the third time in the company’s 85-year history that this step has been taken — once in 2008 and the other two times during this winter storm event.”
Cleco said in its release that it only would make this move, which would come at the direction of its regional reliability coordinator, MISO, as a “last resort” to keep from having longer power outages that could impact the power grid.
If these occur, then residents could experience numerous outages, each less than an hour, until Cleco receives notification from MISO.
“Unfortunately, we don’t receive much advance notice before being forced to implement rolling power outages. Customers should heed this public appeal as a notice for possible power outages,” said Cahill.