Blue Ridge Electric monitoring Winter Weather

With below freezing temperatures in the Upstate of South Carolina, Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative is closely monitoring the weather, reports Terry Ballenger, Vice President of Communications for Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative. “The preparations that have been made through the years as we have continued to build strength into our 7,000-mile distribution system, we’ve tried to construct these lines and other equipment with adequate capacity to handle electrical loads like this. I was talking to our Chief Engineer yesterday and he said we came within about 20 megawatts of our highest peak ever recorded yesterday morning and we are looking ahead to Thursday and will possibly set a new peak on Thursday just due to the strong electrical demand that this prolonged cold snap is producing on the system. But, so far, we’ve not encountered anything that would be considered a serious problem with the system holding up under the demands that are on it today. We hope we will come through this ten-day cold snap with a good record. But we are keeping our eye on things just in case any particular circuit of one of our substation systems might get loaded. But, so far, so good.” Regular maintenance helps ensure the heat stays on, continues Ballenger. “Well, if folks can live with lowering their thermostat a degree or two in their house and maybe put on a sweater to compensate for the cooler temperature. It really pays for an individual with an electric heat pump to have a service person visit once or twice a year to do a check up of the system to make sure it is operating properly. Folks that get on a regularly scheduled maintenance pattern like that are more likely to survive a cold snap without their individual in-house system going bad on them and them having to call out a service person out at odd hours to try to correct the problem for them. So, that would be the best advice I could give to a residential member is to just keep up a regular maintenance schedule on their HVAC system.” To report an outage, call 1-888-BLUERIDGE.