With deep freeze still on, Minnesota utility asks customers to turn down thermostats
All Xcel Energy natural gas customers are urged to lower thermostats to 63 until early Thursday. Minneapolis, St. Paul and Anoka-Hennepin schools will be closed another day.
By Mary Lynn Smith, Mike Hughlett and John Reinan Star Tribune staff writers JANUARY 31, 2019 — 5:50AM
GALLERY
GRID
1/33
Frosty runners Matt Frantzen, left, and Zach Schendel documented their morning dash around Lake Harriet in minus-20 temps Thursday in Minneapolis.
DAVID JOLES – STAR TRIBUNE
Gallery: Frosty runners Matt Frantzen, left, and Zach Schendel documented their morning dash around Lake Harriet in minus-20 temps Thursday in Minneapolis.
TEXT SIZE
440
EMAIL
PRINT
MORE
(UPDATE Thursday 1:45 PM: Xcel Energy has told customers they can return their thermostats to normal. You can find our current, updated story about the cold wave in Minnesota here.)
The brutal cold gripping Minnesota made itself felt in tens of thousands of living rooms Wednesday as Xcel Energy resorted to asking customers to turn their thermostats down to 63 degrees to conserve natural gas.
The request to Xcel’s more than 400,000 customers came as the utility strained in the sub-zero temperatures to keep up with heating demand.
And a few Minnesotans dealt with the nightmare of having no heat at all.
About 150 homes in the Princeton area, about an hour north of Minneapolis, lost natural gas service about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. In response, Xcel asked about 12,000 customers in nearby Becker, Big Lake, Chisago City, Lindstrom, Princeton and Isanti to turn down their thermostats to 60.
Later in the day, the company expanded that request to all of its 460,000 gas customers in Minnesota, although Xcel expected to keep the advisory in place only until Thursday.
We tested out some fun things that can be done in this week's extreme cold.
Video (01:28): Watch 5 viral stunts you can only do in Minnesota's extreme cold
The heating issues weren’t the only challenge posed by the once-in-a-generation chill, as Minnesotans also suffered new frostbite cases, broken water lines and transportation breakdowns.
In the Princeton area, police and fire officials went door-to-door to inform residents about the gas shut-off and that Xcel would put them up in nearby hotels. About two-thirds of those affected by the outage accepted the offer, said company spokesman John Marshall.
According to the Sherburne County sheriff, Xcel also distributed heaters.
Jason Camarena woke up Wednesday morning to find his natural gas service was out and the temperature in his Princeton home had dropped to 54 degrees. He and his wife and two children headed to the nearby AmericInn, but took it all in stride.
“How can you be mad?” Camarena said, noting that Xcel power crews had been out in the bitter cold since 3 a.m.
“I mean they have that, and we have this,” he said, gesturing toward the pool where his children were swimming. To show his appreciation, Camarena brought coffee and hot chocolate Wednesday to the crews at work on the outage near his home.
Greg Butler got the temperature in his home up to 60 degrees with the help of six space heaters.
“I feel like we’ll be all right,” he said.
While Xcel works to restore the heat, the company enlisted the help of licensed plumbers to keep residential pipes from freezing.
“The unprecedented cold and wind that we’re dealing with in Minnesota has customers running their heat almost nonstop which really increases demand on our system,” Xcel said in a statement. “Because we’ve had some outages due to this in central Minnesota, we’re taking further steps and exercising an abundance of caution to help conserve natural gas so the system can continue to operate well throughout the state.”
An engineer with the Minnesota Office of Pipeline Safety is in Princeton working with Xcel to ensure that the company follows proper procedures to restore gas service to customers, Jen Longaecker, a department spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
CenterPoint Energy, the largest gas utility in Minnesota with nearly 870,000 customers, has not had any major problems, said company spokeswoman Alicia Dixon. “We are not experiencing any low-pressure issues on our system and are not issuing any calls for conservation.”