Duke Energy asked customers to conserve power after the snow. Here’s why.
Duke Energy, in the business of selling power, made a rare plea to customers on Sunday asking them to use less of its product to ensure there would be enough to go around.
“Several days of sustained temperatures below freezing are driving unusually high energy demand in our area and available power supplies are currently very limited,” the utility said in a text to customers. “You can help us protect the electric grid & avoid possible temporary power outages by cutting back on nonessential energy use Monday morning from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m.
“We appreciate any assistance you’re able to provide.”
Why did Duke ask customers to conserve power Monday morning?
The request came out of lessons learned from Christmas 2022 when the utility conducted its first “rolling blackouts” in response to a multi-day winter storm that brought 27 mph winds and dropped nighttime temperatures into the single digits across much of the state, Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said Monday.
Duke knew the storm was coming and expected to need more energy than it was able to produce, but its plan to compensate with energy purchased from out-of-state utilities failed when those companies, too, were hit with high demand from the weather.
In addition, instruments at three of Duke’s North Carolina power plants froze up, reducing the amount of power each could produce.
Duke serves about 3.8 million households and businesses in North Carolina, producing power in real time as it’s needed. It has little capacity to store power for future use, Brooks said.
When demand spiked in 2022 , the company was forced to cut power to some customers. But its system for rolling the outages from one customer to the next — so none would be too long in the dark — failed. That meant some customers were without power for hours instead of minutes.
Brooks said the company learned during then that power demand surges in winter in the early morning and again in the evening. That’s different from summer demand surges, which typically happen in the afternoon as temperatures max out.
Knowing that North Carolina was about to be hit with a statewide winter storm over the weekend that would bring heavy snow, bitter cold temperatures and biting winds, the utility’s planning team went to work to estimate how much electricity it would need to generate to meet demand.
When it’s extremely cold, Brooks said, the difference between the outside temperature and the inside temperature grows larger, and just holding the temperature at its normal setting requires heating systems to work harder than normal. That increases demand.
Planners expected some businesses that closed over the weekend to reopen on Monday morning after the storm, and figured families with children home from school would need to run the heat throughout the morning, and possibly the washing machine and dryer to deal with clothes dirtied while playing in the snow.
All that could add up to a surge the utility might not be able to meet, Brooks said.
That’s why the company asked customers to conserve energy from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday.
“We were just saying, ‘Reduce, just a little bit. Bump the thermostat down a few degrees during those hours. Delay running the washer and dryer and the dishwasher. Anything you can do helps us avoid temporary outages.’
“And it worked.”
Though Duke reported several hundred outages across the state, Brooks said demand was manageable and most customers had power Monday morning.
Temperatures are expected to moderate starting Tuesday, so the request isn’t likely to be made again this week, Brooks said.
Duke needs to generate more electricity, but how?
Brooks said the request to customers to limit their usage during the cold snap shows the utility needs more capacity to generate power, both to serve residential customers and big industrial users such as data centers.
The company has said it wants to expand the use of natural gas, coal and experimental nuclear power in the state to meet that demand.
Environmental groups say the utility wants to build out more fossil-fuel-burning plants because under its operating agreements with the state, the regulated monopoly makes bigger profits when it builds large centralized plants. Construction costs for those plants are passed along to consumers.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and groups such as NC WARN say the state and Gov. Josh Stein must press Duke to move more toward renewable energy sources including wind power and solar with battery storage.
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This story was originally published February 2, 2026 at 4:03 PM.
