Tennessee Voices, Episode 354: Teresa Broyles-Aplin, CEO, Nashville Electric Service
The December rolling blackouts and the March 3 windstorm left hundreds of thousands of customers without power for a time.
Behind the scenes, officials at local utilities were working to communicate the situation to the public and get the electricity back on.
On this episode of the Tennessee Voices video podcast, Teresa Broyles-Aplin, president and CEO of Nashville Electric Service (NES), spoke about what happened and why.
We also discussed the growing demand for electricity in a world that is embracing electric vehicles, growing and using more energy.
The plan to address the unprecedented blackouts in the winter were like "building the plane while we were flying it."
Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides power to all Tennessee and portions of several adjoining states, had not anticipated the load on the power grid or that some power plants would fail, Broyles-Aplin said. That required rapid communication with the public, which was frustrated by the blackouts.
She also talked about how linemen worked for days after the March 3 derecho windstorm, which she said resembled a Category 1 hurricane.
NES was founded in 1939 and serves 430,000 customers in Nashville-Davidson County and parts of six neighboring counties.
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The Tennessee Voices videocast is a 20-minute program, which started in March 2020 and invites leaders, thinkers and innovators who have written guest columns for a USA TODAY Network Tennessee publication to share their insights and wisdom with me and our viewers.
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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network - Tennessee. He is of Colombian and Cuban descent, has studied or worked in several Spanish-speaking countries, and was the founding editor of Gaceta Tropical in Southwest Florida. He has lived in Tennessee since 2014. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him at [email protected] or tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Video podcast: Teresa Broyles-Aplin, Nashville Electric Service
