Commentary
This past January, Tennesseans received a chilling reminder of how electrical power actually works… and where it fails. Winter Storm Fern blanketed Middle Tennessee with heavy ice, tree branches buckled, power lines snapped, and a peak of 230,000 households were left without power in freezing temperatures. Statewide, 23 Tennesseans lost their lives due to the storm, and for many families, power didn’t return for nearly two weeks. While power plants were operating during the storm, the “distribution grid,” the network of poles, wires, and equipment to move the power from plants to homes, was the failure point that led to the outages.