Utility resources shift from SW Louisiana to Alabama, Mississippi as Sally approaches

Houston — As Hurricane Sally slowly approached the northern US Gulf Coast Sept. 15, utilities in its path shifted resources from helping restore power in southwest Louisiana following the devastation caused by Hurricane Laura to staging points near the Alabama and Mississippi coastlines.

The US National Hurricane Center's 5 pm ET (2200 GMT) advisory indicated the storm had weakened to a Category 1 system with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph. Sally's center was about 85 miles south of Mobile, Alabama, moving north at 2 mph, with landfall expected late Sept. 15 or early Sept. 16 between Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and Navarre, Florida.

The Energy Information Administration's combined load forecast for Sept. 15 for the PowerSouth Energy Cooperative and Southern Company footprints showed a 1.5% decrease compared with the five-year average for a comparable Tuesday.

PowerSouth is a generation and transmission cooperative serving local electricity co-ops in Alabama, and Southern Co. has utility subsidiaries in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

Despite the likelihood of reduced power demand, Into GTC bilateral day-ahead on-peak trading on the Intercontinental Exchange for delivery Sept. 16, with bids at $19/MWh and offers at $23/MWh, was basically unchanged from S&P Global Platts' index for delivery Sept. 15, at $20.91/MWh.

Authorities have declared a state of emergency for Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, and utilities in Sally's path have started up their emergency operations.

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Restoration preparations

"We have moved resources from elsewhere in our service territory to the Mobile area, where they are pre-staged along with our local crews that are ready to move whenever it is safe to do so," Michael Sznajderman, Alabama Power spokesman, said in a Sept. 15 email. "We have had relatively minimal outages so far and crews are working now where it is safe to do so to get customers back on."

As of about 4 pm ET, Southern's Alabama Power had 6,361 customers without power, according to PowerOutage.US.

Mississippi Power, another Southern unit, pulled a storm team of about 65 people from helping Entergy Louisiana restore service in southwest Louisiana for the past 16 days, but as of about 4:30 pm ET, the company's outage map showed just 15 customers without service.

"The forecast of Sally has proven to be difficult to build a high degree of certainty," said Mississippi Power CEO Anthony Wilson. "While we have seen a steady shift eastward in several of the recent updates, a slight shift to the west could put us back facing the brunt of the storm's wind, storm surge and flooding. We can't let our guard down."

The outage map at Baldwin Electric Membership Corp., a PowerSouth co-op on Mobile Bay, had 718 customers without service as of 4:30 pm ET.

"Our disaster emergency plan has been activated as of 6 am Tuesday," Baldwin EMC spokesman Mark Ingram said in a statement Sept. 15. "We're currently responding to outages and will continue to do so, weather permitting. As conditions deteriorate, we'll pull our employees from the field for their safety. As the storm passes, our crews will be ready to restore power again as safely and quickly as possible."