Generator backup for grid

When Xcel Energy announced rolling blackouts were possible last week, some residents assumed the company's backup power plant on Tucumcari's north side - designed to alleviate local outages - would have picked up the slack if they occurred.

They would have assumed incorrectly.

Instead, an approximately 45-minute citywide blackout occurred Tuesday morning in an effort to lessen the strain on Xcel's power grid and other utility networks, especially in Texas.

About 3,500 customers in Tucumcari were affected by the outage before power returned.

Tucumcari's power plant was running at that time of the outage, but it instead was feeding electricity back into the grid, said Wes Reeves, senior media representative for Xcel.

"The generator is running, but it's also a system resource, so it's been used to help the whole region this week," Reeves wrote Tuesday in a series of emails. "This is a natural disaster affecting dozens of states. All the available power units are running to feed the central grid. The controlled outages are happening in every town in our service area. The power plant is helping to provide Tucumcari's power, as are all the other plants, but everyone is having to take controlled outages to keep the system in balance."

"I think Tucumcari can be very proud that its power plant has played such a key role in helping out," Reeves added Wednesday afternoon.

Tucumcari Mayor Ruth Ann Litchfield said Wednesday she tamped down complaints or rumors about Xcel on social media, including that the company was selling the energy the Tucumcari plant produced back to Texas.

Litchfield said she also fielded questions about the rolling blackout but encountered few complaints, especially because the outage was relatively brief.

"Gosh, we only had one (outage) for 45 minutes," she said. "We've got people all over Texas without power for four to five days."

Litchfield said David Essex, community relations manager for Xcel in Clovis, told her the company purposely did not announce when the Tucumcari blackout would occur.

"David didn't want them jerking up their heaters (beforehand) and causing more problems on the grid," she said.

Xcel announced on its website Thursday afternoon its energy alert was lifted and that no more rolling blackouts would occur.

In 2011, Xcel Energy announced it would move an idle power turbine from near Borger, Texas, to Tucumcari and convert it to run from natural gas to diesel fuel.

The turbine was installed the following year next to a substation on Campbell Avenue. The $20 million project was dedicated in 2013.

"The turbine, with a capacity of 23 megawatts, will serve primarily as a standby source of power if service is interrupted on the main transmission line feeding from the city of Clovis," stated an Xcel news release at the time.

Twenty megawatts will serve about 7,000 homes.

The release noted the turbine would meet the city's electricity demand if the main transmission line failed. In 2011, the city lost power for six hours when wildfires burned 16 power poles.

According to a Quay County Sun article from 2013, it stated Xcel operators also may activate the Tucumcari plant to help meet the regional electric load on days when electricity demand is very high. When needed, the plant would be activated by remote control from the Nichols Generating Station near Amarillo.

Xcel stopped using a previous diesel system in the city because of the age and condition of its generators.

At one point last week, more than 4 million Texans lost power after a nearly unprecedented winter storm and cold snap affected the entire state.

The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities across 14 states that includes New Mexico, called for rolling outages last week because the supply of reserve energy had been exhausted.

Some wind turbine generators in Texas iced over, but nearly twice as much power in the state was wiped out at natural gas and coal plants because the utilities were unprepared for the unseasonably cold weather.

Controlled outages was the only way to avert an even more dire and widespread blackout in Texas, Bill Magness, president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told the Associated Press.

Rolling outages also were reported in about a dozen other states last week because strained electrical grids.