If parts of Oglesby get temporary blackouts, businesses that use a lot of power will be turned off first. Commissioner Jason Curran says that’s the plan, if the city gets enough notice—about a day. If there’s short notice, the places turned off would be entire sections of the city.
Curran says the last circuits he wants to turn off would be to homes, especially senior citizen living places. But if the city has to have a city-wide outage, a cooling center will be open and residents with medical equipment will be allowed to plug in there.
The city made the plan because it’s been warned that transmission lines that take electricity to cities across Illinois can’t handle the entire load on high demand days. Those are usually days when it’s very hot and lots of air conditioners are on.