It’s beginning to feel like clockwork for the Tennessee Valley Authority to stare down frigid temperatures in mid-January that put its seven-state system of power plants to their largest annual test.
The 92-year-old federal agency set its all-time record for highest electricity demand Jan. 22, 2025, breaking a record set almost exactly a year earlier. Now, the nation’s largest government-owned power provider could break the record for a third year in a row.
Temperatures in Chattanooga will dip to 7 degrees at 6 a.m. Tuesday, according to forecasts from the National Weather Service office in Morristown, Tennessee. The temperature will rise to 10 degrees by 8 a.m., typically the hour when winter power use peaks.
TVA is a generation and transmission utility, meaning it produces electricity at mass scale and sends it across Tennessee and part of six neighboring states through a system of high-voltage transmission lines. During last January’s record, TVA delivered enough electricity to power more than 20 million homes at once, according to an estimate the agency uses.
(READ MORE: TVA broke last summer’s peak power demand three times in July)