A government report highlighted Duke’s failures, now a family has filed suit
By Grace Runkel and Catie Bussmann
Updated: Apr. 8, 2024 at 10:40 PM EDT
ANDERSON, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - An investigation by FOX Carolina has uncovered Duke Energy knew rolling outages were a possibility nearly two years prior to a deadly winter storm yet failed to properly prepare a customer notification system ahead of time.
One Upstate family now claims the company was negligent because they waited too long to communicate with customers.
Rolling outages, or “load shedding,” are an emergency procedure utility companies can take to preserve the electric grid. It involves the utility company manually turning off power in certain areas for a short amount of time. They usually occur during periods of high-power demand.
Duke Energy Carolinas, the division of Duke Energy that serves the Upstate and Western North Carolina, says they were forced to start rolling outages on Christmas Eve 2022 because of the unusually cold temperatures brought on by a winter storm.
While the Carolinas did not see any snow or ice, the company blamed high customer demand over the holiday.
Over 500,000 people across the Carolinas lost power because of those outages. Nearly 100,000 of them lived in South Carolina.
Like 18,000 other South Carolinians, Tony Smith, who lived in Anderson County, relied on an oxygen tank that plugged into the wall. Smith, an always-prepared Eagle Scout, also had six portable tanks he could use in the event of an emergency.
On the day of the rolling outages, Tony’s son, Scott, noticed a missed call from his father at 9:30 a.m.
“I called him back, he didn’t answer, he didn’t answer, and there was a three-minute voicemail but it was just him mumbling,” said Scott.
By the time Scott was able to make it to his father’s home, it was too late. He found his 73-year-old father collapsed on the floor, just four feet away from his life-saving medical device.
Tony’s family filed a lawsuit on April 2, 2024, claiming Duke Energy was negligent in failing to adequately predict power demand and failing to provide any prior warning about the rolling outages.
“It’s been terrible for him to walk in and us to realize someone suffocated,” said Scott’s wife, Kelly Smith. “There was no reason for this to happen. He had plenty of oxygen, if he would’ve just known in time and been able to get to his other tanks.”
The lawsuit also claims Tony called Duke Energy’s outage hotline, a phone number the company operates with outage information. However, during the rolling outages, Duke Energy did not update the hotline until hours after the rolling outages began, and once the hotline was operational, it communicated inaccurate information about how long the outages would last.
The Smith’s lawsuit claims Tony likely heard that information.
Duke Energy has not yet responded to the complaint. A company spokesperson released the following statement to FOX Carolina:
South Carolina has two main agencies responsible for overseeing and inspecting utility companies: the Office of Regulatory Staff (ORS) and the Public Service Commission (PSC).
Following the events of Winter Storm Elliott, the Public Service Commission requested the Office of Regulatory Staff investigate Duke Energy’s actions.
The ORS published a report in August, citing multiple failures and errors in Duke Energy’s preparation leading up to Winter Storm Elliott and revealed equipment failures, human error, and software failures as causes for the outages.
The report identified five main causes:
- Duke Energy “significantly” underestimated demand
- Multiple equipment failures at generation plants, including human error, such as a door being left open to expose equipment to cold air
- Power purchases from neighboring utility companies were never delivered
- Power generation contracted by other utilities failed
- A software system designed to mitigate the rolling outages failed
The ORS report claims because the software system failed, “customer outages were extended and restoration was delayed.” The report says if the software had functioned properly, power to customers would have been restored sooner.
In a letter Duke Energy representatives wrote in response to the ORS report, the company pushed back against claims it did not adequately predict energy demand.
Duke Energy told the PSC that it predicts power demand with models based on previous weather events, and that a similar day “did not exist.”
But during our investigation, FOX Carolina obtained an internal memorandum sent to Duke Energy Corporation’s Board of Directors.
The memo details an assessment Duke Energy performed to evaluate how the company would respond to an extreme cold-weather event like what happened to the Texas electric grid in 2021.
The memo, dated May 6, 2021, reads in part: “resources are adequate … assets are available for normal peak season operation. However, modeling of extreme cold (10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than prior extremes) conducted for Duke Energy Progress and Duke Energy Carolinas indicated significant load-shedding may be necessary…”
In a filing dated March 7, 2024, Duke Energy told the Public Service Commission it has, “implemented outage alerts that are specific to rotational load shed [rolling outages] that replaces the standard outage alert messaging customers normally received. The Companies [Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress] plan to communicate these alerts via text, email or outbound call based on the customers’ preferences.”
FOX Carolina asked Duke Energy about why they did not have a notification system in place before the events of Christmas Eve 2022, when the board was warned in May 2021 rolling outages were a possibility.
FOX Carolina did not receive a response to our question about why the outage alerts were not in place earlier.
South Carolina has what’s called an Electric Bill of Rights. It details what utility customers are entitled to know. In it, it says “you have the right to contact the electrical utility at all hours in case of emergency or unscheduled interruptions in your electric service,” but nowhere in these requirements does it say a utility company is responsible for notifying customers.
We asked the Smith family what they want to see changed.
“I want to see a huge change made; to have a system that informs people,” said Kelly Smith. “They need to have legislation that there are reminders when other events happen, they inform customers. I feel like people have got to be notified like an amber alert, like a tornado warning. A better job has to be done to inform people, because so many people live on oxygen.”
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