On August 25, 2022, three dozen electric cooperative directors, managers and staff from across South Dakota and western Minnesota toured the facilities of the Southwest Power Pool in Little Rock, Ark. The Southwest Power Pool, or SPP, is responsible for managing the electric grid and wholesale power market throughout a 13-state region that spans from the Canadian Border to northern Texas.
I think few consumers take time to contemplate, just how much our country’s economy, national security and the health and safety of our citizens depends upon the reliable delivery of electricity. Our power grid has been constantly growing and evolving for the past 90 years; it is an absolute engineering marvel with more than 9,200 generating units producing more than 1 million megawatts of generating capacity. This entire system works in unison while connected to 600,000 miles of transmission lines and it all costs you and me mere pennies per kilowatt hour and includes delivery to our homes. Amazing, when you sit down and take a minute to think about it.
Balancing generation (making energy) and transmission (moving energy) with demand (using energy) can be extremely challenging, especially with increasing demand for electricity, the early retirement of coal and natural gas facilities and the growth of intermittent generation like wind and solar. The professionals at the SPP described how they manage to pull it off practically every second of every day and night, through fair weather and foul.
Pat Soukup, Central Electric Manager of Member Services, participated in the tour and came away with a greater understanding of how SPP operators do their jobs. “There are so many people behind the scenes making sure the power flows seamlessly across the country. SPP is such a complex entity. Decisions about our electricity, which affects our daily lives, sometimes need to be made within seconds.” He and the rest of the group learned that maintaining the necessary equilibrium of the power grid becomes much more complex when Mother Nature decides to send us a severe heat wave or a strong winter blizzard.
Surviving these events without massive regional blackouts and substantial destruction of the infrastructure requires coordination and communication. And that was one of the primary purposes of this tour: to meet the folks who work at the switches, to understand what they do, and share information so that we can manage through the next storm event and prevent prolonged outages.
It’s impossible to expect the system or the people who run it to perform absolutely flawlessly under all conditions, but be assured that the folks at SPP are highly competent and conscientious professionals. They take their jobs very seriously because, after all, the system that delivers affordable and reliable electricity to your home and mine also delivers it to their families.
Albert Einstein once observed that, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” In order for your cooperative to meet the growing demand for renewable energy and ensure the reliability of your power supply, we must constantly make operational adjustments as we strive for balance and a brighter future for our members.
Until next month, stay safe!