GREENSBORO, N.C. — Duke Energy is apologizing for half a million outages over Christmas weekend and promising their customers they will do better.
Duke Energy leaders went before the state utility commission Tuesday to answer questions about the rolling outages.
Executives presented their findings from Christmas weekend when hundreds of thousands of customers were impacted by the outages.
The company says the high demand for energy and historic cold weather caused by the storm led to initial outages.
Since nearby states were also in the storm's path, the company wasn't able to buy power from somewhere else, forcing them to turn to temporary power outages.
"This was the first time in our history that we had to implement rolling service disruptions and though our entire team was focused on executing the load reduction plan, the process did not go as smoothly as we had planned," said Duke Energy state president, Kendal Bowman.
Executive vice president and CEO, Julie Janson said they regret that they weren't able to give customers advance notice of the outages and acknowledge that the outages themselves lasted far longer than expected.
"We own what happened. We have set out on a path to ensure that if we're faced with a similar challenge, we will see a different outcome and provide a better customer experience," said Janson.
Duke says they are reviewing systems and procedures and will see how other providers responded to learn any best practices.
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