Duke customers say they didn’t receive outage warnings. That was strategic, company says
Duke Energy told NC regulators it made a strategic decision not to send alerts directly to customers as they cut power across the Carolinas on Christmas Eve, outages many say lasted hours and came with no notice.
The latest comments came at a Tuesday hearing before the North Carolina Utilities Commission, where commissioners called for Duke Energy to improve its system for communicating with customers after issues arose during intentional Christmas weekend blackouts.
The need to temporarily cut power to some customers arose quickly early on Dec. 24, because of frigid temperatures and an overtaxed energy supply, company officials said. And the process of sending alerts such as text messages and emails would have taken “several hours.”
Duke Energy officials said they instead elected to initially alert the public to the planned outages through “mass media” such as social media and statements to the press rather than through direct communication as a time-saving measure.
“To send a specialized message to customers in conditions like this, we actually have to go in and develop that message. And we actually have to send it out to the customers using the channels that we have and the suppliers that actually send those messages out,” Scott Batson, Duke Energy’s senior vice president and chief distribution officer, told the commission.
Duke Energy details what was, wasn’t done during outages
In its presentation to the commission, Duke Energy said it had sent “medical alert and critical health care notifications” on Dec. 21 ahead of anticipated high winds and additional “mass messaging” and “targeted communications” on Dec. 22 and 23 about the winds.
Those messages said winds in the forecast had “the potential to cause widespread power outages,” according to copies provided by Duke Energy,
On Dec. 24 — the day of the blackouts — initial social media posts, call center messages, news releases and “outage banners” on Duke Energy’s website indicated the rolling outages would last 15 to 30 minutes, then 30 minutes to an hour.
At Tuesday’s hearing, company officials said that “information was inaccurate for some customers” because a software issue affected the company’s automatic power restoration system.
Nearly all of the more than 800 self-identified Duke Energy customers who responded to a Charlotte Observer survey said they were without power for more than an hour, and most for more than three hours.
And a majority of the Duke Energy customers who responded to the survey — more than 60% — said they never received anything from the power company.
Most respondents said they lost power either before 7 a.m. or between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Duke Energy said that in addition to the outages caused by the rolling blackouts and ensuing issues, some of the outages caused earlier in the week by high winds also hadn’t been resolved by Dec. 24.
The first text messages sent by Duke Energy on Dec. 24 came at 6 p.m. and asked customers to voluntarily reduce energy use to prevent further “load shedding” in the days to come, according to the timeline provided by the company.
In a statement, Gov. Roy Cooper said he “stated his concerns and asked questions about the lack of expected communication with customers” in his own Tuesday meeting with Duke Energy executives.
Commission calls for improvement to ‘opt-in’ system
Duke Energy told the utilities commission and the Observer it has an “opt-in” system for customer notifications, meaning that “it is the customer’s responsibility” to sign up for alerts and “to ensure (Duke Energy has) their most up to date information.”
Three-fourths of Duke Energy customers in North and South Carolina are subscribed to outage alerts through text, emails and/or voice messages, company spokesman Keith Richardson said in an email.
“Ideally, a customer would sign up to receive alerts via several channels just in case a phone number or email has changed,” he added. “Routinely throughout the year, we do remind customers to ensure we have their most up to date information to receive outage alerts.”
Members of the Utilities Commission questioned Duke Energy executives about their communication plan, including the use of an “opt-in” system over an “opt-out” program.
Improving the system should be among the top priorities for Duke Energy as it evaluates what happened during the holiday outages, the commission said.
“When it comes to this notification system, we need to upgrade it as soon as possible,” commissioner Floyd McKissick, Jr. said.
This story was originally published January 5, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Duke customers say they didn’t receive outage warnings. That was strategic, company says."
