“Major Load-Shedding” Event Leaves Huge Swaths of Urban Alaska in the Dark

September 25, 2023

Mid-Sunday afternoon, Alaskans from Fairbanks to Homer were suddenly without power.

Facebook, X, Instagram and other social media went wild with posts from concerned residents and business owners, wondering what could possibly have shut down power across large swaths of Alaska’s major population centers.  Maps of affected areas were cut and pasted onto personal websites and social media accounts, with conspiracy theories abounding as to what started the outage.

Most homes and businesses recovered within 30 minutes, but some went into the evening before power was restored.

The culprit, according to the utilities, was a “major load-shedding event”.  From Chugach Electric:

Although the outage was more inconvenient than anything else, it certainly showed the impact of unplanned lapses in electricity bring.  With the eco-left continuing to drive America toward less reliable energy sources – specifically wind and solar – and away from highly reliable oil, gas and coal, utilities across the country have seen increased outages and inadvertent events.

Here’s hoping Alaska continues to reject calls to decarbonize its electric grid, or events like yesterdays will become more normal.