Officials with a Texas-owned local utility provider say their request for Hoosiers to conserve natural gas is a proactive approach to disastrous conditions occurring in the South.
“We do not have an emergency situation here,” said Alyssia Oshodi, a senior communications specialist with Houston-based CenterPoint Energy, which purchased Vincennes’ Vectren Corp. in 2019.
“The system here is working as it should. The supply is there. We are just asking for people’s assistance to mitigate any disruption that could occur.”
A winter storm moved through huge swaths of the U.S. early this week, dropping record amounts of snow and ice, both here and in the South — Gulf states whose infrastructure simply isn’t equipped to deal with freezing conditions.
Residents in states like Texas and Oklahoma are now suffering without power or enduring rolling blackouts to conserve energy; natural gas plants there, too, have been shut down.
At least 30 people in the South have died in the extreme weather this week, some while struggling to find warmth inside their homes. In the Houston area, one family succumbed to carbon monoxide from car exhaust in their garage. Another perished as they used a fireplace to keep warm.
Record low temperatures were reported in city after city, and residents were reporting hours and hours without power or heat.
Utilities from Minnesota to Texas and Mississippi have implemented the rolling blackouts to ease the burden on power grids straining to meet extreme demand for heat and electricity. In Mexico, rolling blackouts Tuesday covered more than one-third of the country after the storms in Texas cut the supply of imported natural gas.
The worst U.S. power outages by far have been in Texas, where 3 million homes and businesses remained without power as of midday Wednesday.
CenterPoint this week issued a press release asking Hoosiers to do their part in the now nationwide effort to conserve natural gas.
But they reiterated that a shortage here is highly unlikely.
“We just want to ask people to assist us in doing everything we can to prevent a power disruption,” Oshodi said.
So in response to the high heating demand, CenterPoint Energy — which is the main supplier of natural gas to Knox and surrounding counties — is asking its Hoosier natural gas customers to temporarily lower their thermostat settings to 60-65 degrees during the day and to lower their usual thermostat settings at night by at least five degrees to help conserve natural gas.
The utility serves approximately 113,000 natural gas customers in its southwestern Indiana territory alone.
The utility also suggests lowering the temperature setting on your water heater and limiting the use of hot water. Residents can also open blinds and shades to take advantage of the sun’s natural heat during the day and close them at night to reduce heat loss.
“Again, we are not in a situation where there is any cause for concern,” Oshodi said. “There could come a time when we would be in danger of running short, but we are not there yet.
“We’re just asking our customers to conserve because we are seeing these extreme temperatures.”
Temperatures here, as with much of the U.S., have been unseasonably cold, dropping into the single digits overnight and bringing wind chill factors well below zero.
Meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis, however, are calling for a gradual warmup.
The bitter cold remains today and Friday as highs are expected to be only around 20 degrees; lows will remain in the single digits.
Saturday’s high is expected to be only slightly warmer at 28 degrees. Sunday, however, brings chances of rain showers and a warmer 38 degrees.
Temperatures are then expected to be in the mid 40s by this time next week.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.