NES leaders announce next steps after full power restoration post Fern

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• Nashville Electric Service just finished restoring power to the last of the 230,000 customers left without power at the peak of Winter Storm Fern.
• NES president and CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin said preliminary estimates show the cost of the damage to Nashville’s power grid will likely land between $110 million and $140 million.
• NES will conduct an independent after-action review, donate $1 million to the United Way’s storm recovery fund and institute some financial relief for customers as part of its next steps.

Nashville Electric Service will conduct an independent after-action review, donate $1 million to the United Way’s storm recovery fund and institute some financial relief for customers as part of its first steps to aid recovery efforts in the wake of Winter Storm Fern.

NES leaders unveiled those actions and more Feb. 9 during a special-called meeting of the Electric Power Board, the group’s first sit-down since holding an abbreviated regular meeting just days into the aftermath of an historic ice storm that, at its peak, left 230,000 NES customers without power.

By Friday, Feb. 6, NES had restored power to 99.9% of customers, and current outages as of 10:30 a.m. Feb. 9 sat at less than 150. But before then, thousands huddled for more than a week in frigid temperatures, waiting for power to return.

While historic in scope and size, the storm was also historic in the scale of damage it caused to Nashville’s power grid, NES president and CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin said at the Feb. 9 board meeting. Preliminary estimates show the cost of that damage will likely land between $110 million and $140 million, Broyles-Aplin said, a number that “far exceeds any storm in our history, by many multiples.”

“While a full restoration occurred on Feb. 6, the effects will linger in our community,” Broyles-Aplin said. “We recognize the hardship that Winter Storm Fern placed on our customers, as well as areas where we failed to help customers make informed decisions about the timeline for restoration.”

Here’s what NES leaders plan to do from here.

What NES’ CEO said about the utility’s next steps

Pursuing an independent review is not a new development, as Broyles-Aplin shared that intent several days ago. Board members approved initiating that review unanimously on Feb. 9.

But other actions were announced for the first time at the special board meeting, including several measures to provide some financial support for customers.

While there are regulatory hurdles that Broyles-Aplin said prevent NES from discounting bills, the utility will be suspending all disconnects and late fees through June and providing unlimited payment arrangements for all customers through the end of the calendar year, which typically are allowed on a more limited basis. NES will also provide additional online and call center services to quickly handle customer traffic, she said.

Broyles-Aplin also committed to several more immediate actions, including evaluating enhancements to the utility’s emergency management leadership structure and how NES communicates outage information to customers.

“While we’re moving towards the recovery process, I’m clear that we did not meet the expectations of our customers, particularly with how we communicated critical information to them,” Broyles-Aplin said. “We are an organization made up of more than 900 employees who must show up every day and execute, myself included, to ensure Nashville has the power it needs, rain or shine.”

She said NES will also review and refine its practices for estimating restoration timelines and take further steps to assess the power grid’s resiliency, particularly through strategies like vegetation management and undergrounding power lines.

Board members also unanimously approved two other measures at the Feb. 9 meeting.

One of them was the $1 million donation to the United Way of Greater Nashville’s Winter Storm Recovery Fund, nearly doubling the roughly $1,250,000 in donations reflected on the nonprofit’s website as of 10:30 a.m. Feb. 9.

The other increases the CEO’s emergency spending authority related to power restoration in the wake of the storm from $500,000 for each contract up to $5 million each, which board members were told would only apply to pre-existing contracts that had already been authorized and “are necessary to respond and recover from Winter Storm Fern.”

Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him with questions, tips and story ideas at [email protected].