Hot, dry weather is straining the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power system, forcing conservation actions and aggressive lowering of tributary lakes, and Athens Utilities has been asked to “conserve electricity.”

“The whole eastern United States is affected,” TVA spokesman John Moulton said Tuesday. “It is not only TVA.”

To avoid brownouts or major outages, the country’s largest public utility asked about 200 major industrial customers in its seven-state region to cut back power use for the first time since January 2003.

Athens Mayor Dan Williams said electric department manager Gary Scroggins received e-mails throughout the day Tuesday from TVA officials.

“It’s not a crisis, but apparently the early phase they go through when things get tight,” Williams said. “TVA was asking Athens Utilities to conserve electricity, to not use it unless it’s needed.”

Brownouts, when power is cut to sections of a city for short periods to conserve, have not been threatened. Williams said TVA has not recommended issuing a call to residents to conserve.

“But it’s probably time we need to think about that,” he said. “In places where it’s not necessary for the air conditioner to be used, we probably ought to cut back.”

Williams added, “You have to look at health issues, too, the elderly and those who need air should use it. But people should use it as sparingly as they can because, at some point, it can shut down.”



Industries cut back

Among the industries participating in conservation efforts were Bridgestone/Firestone’s passenger-tire production line in La Vergne, a Nissan auto plant in Smyrna and the Saturn Corp. factory in Spring Hill.

The action lasted just a few hours Monday. But it was enough to get TVA past a peak demand period around 4 p.m. central daylight time when the temperature around the Tennessee Valley hit 91 and consumption reached a near-record 30,525 megawatts.

“We could very well do that again today,” Moulton said.

TVA’s Watts Bar nuclear plant in Spring City was knocked off line by a generator problem around noon Monday and it was unclear when it would be fixed. Meanwhile, a shutdown boiler at the Paradise coal-fired power plant in Kentucky returned to service Tuesday.

At TVA’s Knoxville headquarters, the lights were low and the thermostats turned up Tuesday.

The prolonged hot, dry conditions are affecting everything from crops to lake recreation.

“Everything is suffering because it’s been really dry and really hot,” agriculture extension agent David Vandergriff told The Knoxville News Sentinel. “It’s affecting food crops, ornamental plants and turf grass. There’s not much that’s not suffering right now.”

TVA normally sees average rainfall across the valley of about 52 inches by fiscal year’s end on Sept. 30. Rainfall so far this year is 5.5 inches below normal.

That has hurt TVA’s ability to generate its cheapest electricity from hydroelectric dams. It also is forcing the utility to lower recreational levels in 35 reservoirs, mostly in eastern Tennessee, more aggressively to provide cooling water for fossil and nuclear plants and to maintain water quality.

“We haven’t been able to maintain the reservoir levels at their (targeted) summer levels throughout much of the summer,” Moulton said. “As we start drawing them down (for the season), the effect is going to be much more pronounced.”