From Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle’s seat, he sees a city that is growing rapidly and a city that was part of blackouts in December intended to help preserve the electrical grid.

And he asked the obvious question: Does north Alabama have enough power generation?

“It kind of stems back to the Christmas freezing temperatures and the rolling blackouts,” Battle said. “Our normal demand on a day like Christmas will be 21,000 (megawatts). And that day, we were pulling back 33-34 megawatts. There was just a lot more power usage than was normal.”

Indeed, TVA said it had record demand for electricity on Dec. 23-24 and resorted to calling for rolling blackouts — temporary power outages — throughout its service area to help protect its electrical grid. In Huntsville, about 60 percent of Huntsville Utilities customers twice lost power on Christmas Eve for about 30 minutes as part of the rolling blackouts.

“And so naturally, when that happened, we had to go in some conservation modes,” Battle said of the record demand. “And that’s when the rolling blackouts came about. And our conversation with TVA is, Do we invest in more generation systems?”

It’s a question that looks into the uncertainty of the future. As part of that forward look, Battle took part in a panel discussion at the end of February with Huntsville Utilities President Wes Kelley, TVA board member Joe Ritch of Huntsville and other TVA officials when TVA held a leadership conference in Huntsville.

But the broad-based answer to Battle’s question, according to Kelley, is that TVA is working on it. The federal utility with a footprint in seven southeastern states, in a sense, lives in the uncertainty of the future in anticipating the demand for electricity.

In the short term, Kelley said TVA already had new power generating facilities under construction before the rolling blackouts.

“TVA is bringing some natural gas units online that they’ve had under construction for a little while now,” Kelley said. “Several of those units are coming online in 2023. And that’s going to put us in a better position than we’ve been going into (the December blackouts).”

Kelley made the point, however, that simply building more power plants does not solve every problem when it comes to demand for electricity to accommodate extreme weather events. After all, the blackouts were a first for TVA in its 90-year history. The utility has said it is taking “full responsibility” for the blackouts and is conducting an internal review of the how it handled the record demand in December.

Then again, losing electricity – regardless of the reason — is all but unacceptable. During the Christmas Eve blackout, then-Congressman-elect Dale Strong, a Huntsville Utilities customer, posted on Facebook that he would have some “tough questions” for TVA about the blackouts.

Kelley said there is a delicate balance to be struck. Everyone wants affordable rates and everyone wants reliability. And how do you make one work with the other?

“One of the old jokes in our industry is, it’s always about rates, rates, rates, rates, rates, until the lights go out,” Kelley said. “And then it doesn’t matter how much it costs. Just get the lights back on again. So we got a little flavor of that during Winter Storm Elliott (in December).”

But will customers pay extra for those rare weather events – such as the once-in-90-years freeze in December — that taxes the power grid?

“One of the things we struggle with is if we have a very unusual event and power has spiked due to a rise in demand, which is unusual, do we build enough generation to meet power all the time?” Kelley said. “I think most customers, if you asked them that question, the answer is yes. You build enough power plants to supply power all the time.

“However, some of those plants, because of how peaky electric load is, some of those plants might only run a few hours a year. So how much money do you want to spend in rates to support plants that might run a few hours a year? That is a point of discussion.”

It’s an issue with more questions than answers.

For Battle, he sees growth — and growing electrical demand — not only in Huntsville but throughout the TVA region. The mayor pointed to the $5.6 billion Ford plant under construction near Memphis that will produce electric pick-up trucks and batteries. And there is the continuing growth at major cities such as Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville. During the December deep freeze, TVA called on large industrial plants to slow or halt production as another conservation strategy in addition to the blackouts.

“It’s an ongoing conversation that we’re having with TVA and we will continue to have with TVA about ‘Let’s look out 5, 10, 15, 20 years in the future’ and they’re doing that,” Battle said. “But let’s partner with them and see how we can make sure that we can meet the demands of the future.”

Kelley said such forward looks are critical. For instance, green energy staples such as electric vehicles and growing demand for solar panels lead to more power demand. And the politically-popular issue of bringing back industry that the U.S. had previously shipped overseas adds another layer of demand.

In fact, Kelley said TVA’s plan to build one of its largest solar fields in north Alabama has been slowed because of overseas supply-chain issues on solar panels.

“Things like computer chips and batteries and solar panels, these are key to tomorrow’s technology and we want them located in the U.S.,” Kelley said. “All of those things are big power users in their factory setting. Meaning, a chip factory has a massive electric demand. A company that makes batteries has a massive electric demand. So as we onshore industries back to the U.S., that is creating a significant rise in industrial potential.”

In summary, Kelley said it’s a multi-pronged approach to ensure generation: From TVA getting maximum efficiency from its current generation fleet to the growth of solar energy supplemented by natural gas to new technology in nuclear.

“The one that I’m putting a lot of hope in, which is down the road, is small modular reactors, SMRs,” Kelley said. “But I think that’s 10-15 years down the road. But I think that small nuclear plants — think about one the size of a Navy ship — they can provide power to say, 25,000 to 50,000 homes, scattered around the valley. My vision long term for us 20 years from now is we have a bunch of big nuclear plants that provide base power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We have these little SMRs scattered around to sort of ramp up and ramp down as people’s usage goes up and down.

“We’ve got solar there to capture all the sun that we can as much as we can. And then gas is simply used as our backup technology. That’s that’s our failsafe. That’s our resiliency, in-case-of-emergency-break-glass, fire up the gas plants to keep the lights on. And I recognize that that vision is probably 10 to 20 years out.”