Evergy says more rolling blackouts, power outages possible through Wednesday morning

After two days of rolling blackouts in Kansas and Missouri, Evergy officials said the continuing energy emergency could lead to more outages through Wednesday morning as the region remains in a deep freeze.

Evergy and other major energy companies implemented rolling blackouts Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, cutting power across Kansas and Missouri to avoid a large-scale power outage in the Midwest, where subzero temperatures are driving people to use more energy to heat their homes than usual, which is putting record-level stress on the power grid.

As demands continue outpacing power generation, the most likely time for the next round of rolling blackouts are Tuesday evening after 8 p.m. and Wednesday morning. Customers are being asked to conserve as much energy as possible. They will not receive a warning before electricity is shut off.

“It’s really a minute-by-minute thing. We’re cautiously optimistic that we’re through the worst of it, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” Chuck Caisley, an Evergy spokesperson, told reporters Tuesday evening.

“Many of the conditions that were present (Tuesday) morning to create the need to have temporary emergency power reductions are still in place,” he said.

After cutting power to fewer than 60,000 customers on Monday, Evergy was given a directive from Southwest Power Pool to drastically reduce the amount of energy being used in Kansas and Missouri.

On Tuesday morning, Evergy cut power to 270,000 customers, or about 16% of the company’s customer base, Caisley said.

Although Evergy had previously said to expect outages to last 30 minutes to an hour, many customers had their power shut off for three or more hours Tuesday.

How long an outage lasts depends on how much energy Southwest Power Pool asks Evergy to cut, Caisley said.

“If the situation mirrors what we saw on Monday ... then our expectation would be closer to the 30- to 60-minute range,” he said. “If we get a situation where five times the amount of energy is required to be taken off our system, like we saw today, those power outages, unfortunately, are going to be a little longer in duration.”

If you have an outage, call Evergy at 800-544-4857.

Evergy has been overwhelmed by a record number of calls and website visits, Caisley said.

“Sometimes people had to wait a considerable amount of time to talk to a call center representative, despite being fully staffed and ready to go,” he said. “We apologize for that. It is certainly not our goal to have difficulties communicating with us and reporting an outage in a situation like this. It is something that we are already working on to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and it’s certainly something we will learn from in the future.”

This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 7:54 PM.