The coldest temperatures so far this winter will blow into the Tennessee Valley this week with snow flurries expected Tuesday and temperatures expected to drop into the teens by Thursday.
“When the cold front comes through tomorrow there will be a little bit of light rain and that should change over to a light snow by tomorrow morning as temperatures fall below freezing in Chattanooga sometime around 4 to 5 a.m. tomorrow,” TVA Meteorologist Patrick Walshe said Monday. “We’re not anticipating any major snow storm at this point. But it is expected to fall off into the upper teens and low 20s the following couple of nights.”
Thursday morning is expected to be the coldest temperature across the Valley so far this winter with temperatures in the low teens in the northern and eastern parts of TVA’s 7-state region. That will likely boost TVA’s power demand early Thursday to around 30,000 megawatts or more.
But TVA is not expecting any problems meeting the peak power demand with all of its base load plants running and additional power from electricity generation purchased from independent power producers and the use of some of TVA’s combustion turbines. TVA is not planning on implementing any of its load control of voluntary conservation measures to meet the peak demand, TVA spokesman Scott Fielder said.
“We’re expecting the coldest temperatures so far this year, but it won’t be as cold as what we reached a year ago in January,” said Walshe, TVA’s manager of operations. “A lot of people thought this was going to be a colder-than-normal winter, but it hasn’t necessarily worked out that way so far. Barring any future cold in February or March, this week is likely to be the coldest weather of winter and our biggest power peak of the year and that peak is a bit below our normal peak.”
The cold weather this week is far warmer than the coldest days reached a year ago. In 2018 on New Year’s Day, average temperatures across the Tennessee Valley fell to 10 degrees, pushing TVA’s power demand to the highest for any holiday on record. Two and a half weeks later, TVA set an all-time 24-hour power consumption record on Jan. 17, 2018 when TVA sold a record 706 gigawatt hours of electricity in a 24-hour period. Temperatures fell into the single digits in much of the Tennessee Valley on that date, including 8 degrees Fahrenheit in Chattanooga.
That pushed up the peak demand for electricity in the Tennessee Valley to 32,513 megawatts. TVA’s all-time power peak was set in the summer of 2007 when temperatures across the Valley averaged 102 degrees Fahrenheit and the peak demand jumped to 33,482 megawatts from heavy electricity consumption from air conditioners.
Most homes and businesses in the Tennessee Valley are heated with electricity and the cold weather pushes up power usage by electric furnaces, heaters and fans.
Most electric furnaces in the Tennessee Valley use heat pumps, which are most effective when temperatures are mild. But during extreme cold, the backup heater – often electric coil heat or gas-fired backup heat – kicks on to maintain high energy-efficiency levels. Since heat pumps move heat rather than generate it, they are much more efficient in temperate climate zones.
The cold weather also encourages some households to use more space heaters and even ovens to supplement their home heating, which are even more inefficient. Fieldler said the typical space heater is equivalent of running 30 60-watt light bulbs.
After shivering through this week’s cold weather, temperatures should heat up by the weekend, Walshe said.
“We should have a warmer than normal start to February,” he said.