Chattanooga power customers have complained mightily — and not without good reason — about the Tennessee Valley Authority’s rolling electricity blackouts that plagued them in the days before Christmas last month.
They complained because of the inconvenience, of course. But they also may have recalled the federal utility’s statements and promises over the last decade declaring the demand for electricity would be less going forward and that the chances of rolling blackouts were practically nil.
“We find ourselves at a time when we don’t need as much capacity as we have,” then-TVA President Bill Johnson said in 2013. “There has been a significant reduction in demand over four or five years, and we don’t see robust demand in the future.”
With electric cars envisioned in the near future, we wondered at the time how demand could stay lower.