The Tennessee Valley Authority offices in Chattanooga are pictured above. (Photo courtesy TVA)
Power demand hit a peak of 32,460 megawatts at 9 a.m. Tuesday, the second-highest winter peak in Tennessee Valley Authority history.
The preliminary peak power demand occurred when the average temperature in the Tennessee Valley was a frigid 4 degrees, TVA said.
In a press release, the public utility said electricity use is now coming down. [Read more…]
About 620 customers lost power during a Sunday afternoon outage, Oak Ridge Electric Director Jack Suggs said Monday.
The outage started around 3 p.m. and lasted until 4:45 p.m. It affected the center of the city north of Oak Ridge Turnpike.
Suggs said workers did not find the exact cause, but they suspect it was a tree limb that fell onto an electrical line and then blew off or fell through before workers arrived.
The outage affected the Oak Ridge Public Library, Oak Ridge High School, and Grove Center. [Read more…]
A small fire around an electrical outlet in a bedroom on a multifamily home on Hamilton Circle was extinguished before firefighters arrived Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
Firefighters found light smoke and evidence of burning when they arrived at 102 Hamilton Circle at about 3 p.m. Tuesday, but they said the fire had not spread. [Read more…]
By Leslie Agron and Pat Fain
Anyone a Gilbert and Sullivan fan?
“When I was a lad I served a term / As office boy to an attorney’s firm. /
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor, / And I polished up the handle of the big front door.†(HMS Pinafore)
So, how does this go in Oak Ridge? Perhaps: Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Carbon Fiber Technology Facility will revolutionize the choice of materials used in manufacturing. Major manufactures, such as auto companies, will be falling over themselves soon to locate here, so as to capitalize on the technical information to be transferred from ORNL (possibly, but it might be a few years out yet). They will all want sites in Horizon Center, next to the ORNL demonstration facility, to be closest to the technology (maybe, but remember that Nissan found a Middle Tennessee location adequate for transfer of battery technology they consider vital to their future).
Carbon fiber manufacturing is a high energy-utilizing process. ORNL’s demonstration facility could take most of the 10-megawatt energy capacity at Horizon Center (true, but Horizon Center was designed as a commercial park, not as an industrial park). So we need a large project to bring 20 megawatts of additional electrical capacity into Horizon Center right away to meet this pressing need (hmm…has there been someone knocking at our doors lately that they have not been telling us about? What we seem to need right now is an incremental project to put in a lesser amount of power, especially at peak load times, so that the one or two parcels we might sell soon at Horizon Center will have adequate power available—else they are correct that nothing might sell). [Read more…]
The progressive and socialist vision for the direction of this country is an ordered society where poverty is eliminated, and healthcare and pensions for life are provided by a central authority or government. The foundation for this structure is rooted in utopian theories that are based on the premise that in a free market society, people fear for basic necessities and lack the opportunities to obtain equality. Regrettably however, ordered societies have never proven viable…which we know is accurate because had they succeeded and flourish; we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
There are two significant reasons why ordered societies fail. The first is the central authority’s inability to accurately allocate and distribute scarce resources for the production of goods and services, which over time diminishes the methods of production that result in a reduced standard of living—the opposite of what was promised. Using the current administration policies regarding energy as an example, the central government declared solar and wind a priority over gas and oil production. Billions were redirected to solar and wind and nothing was produced, except a resulting consequence of increased gas and oil prices. [Read more…]
A car driven by an Oak Ridge man crashed into a utility pole near Lafayette Drive on Saturday, knocking out power to about 10 customers, including Walmart and Chick-fil-A. (Photos by Tom Scott)
A car crashed into a utility pole along Lafayette Drive on Saturday afternoon, knocking out power to a few large customers, including Walmart and Chick-fil-A.
Jeffrey Wells Wallace, 60, of Oak Ridge, was eastbound in a 2010 Toyota Prius four-door sedan on Lafayette Drive near Midway Lane when his vehicle went off the roadway and struck a utility pole about six feet off the road at about 2:45 p.m. Saturday, authorities said.
Wallace was conscious was police arrived, but he said he didn’t remember the collision, Oak Ridge Police Department Officer Brandan L. Sharp said in a crash report. [Read more…]
A driver reportedly suffered minor injuries and power was knocked out in an area of west Oak Ridge after a single-vehicle accident on South Jefferson Circle on Sunday. (Photos by Tom Scott)
A car hit a utility pole cable on South Jefferson Circle on Sunday night, breaking the pole and knocking out power to about 690 customers, a city official said Monday.
The customers who lost power after the 7:45 p.m. accident were located along Louisiana Avenue and its side streets, Oak Ridge Electric Director Jack Suggs said. He said temporary repairs were made, and power was fully restored at about 9:15 p.m.
Suggs said the car left the roadway—it wasn’t clear whether it had been on Oak Ridge Turnpike or South Jefferson Circle—and struck a guy wire that holds up a pole near Weatherford Mortuary. The pole broke and split down the middle.
“Emergency responders arrived at the scene and secured it until personnel from the power company could be called in and respond,†Suggs said.
The driver was reportedly taken by ambulance to Methodist Medical Center with what appeared to be minor injuries.
Oak Ridge firefighter David Gray responds to a single-vehicle accident between a car and a utility pole on South Jefferson Circle on Sunday night.
City workers used a utility truck to hold the pole in place through Sunday night.
Suggs said crews planned to replace the pole today. Suggs said he didn’t expect many outages, if any, while the pole is changed.
“Although the ever present possibility of a power outage becomes even greater when lines are being repaired, we anticipate that we will be able to notify all customers affected individually,†Suggs said.
