CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Overwhelming demand for heat during the region’s arctic plunge forced Duke Energy to roll out controlled blackouts of 15 to 30 minutes across North Carolina Saturday on Christmas Eve.
A number of surprised and angry customers took to social media to vent about the rare and surprise action.
The Charlotte-based utility stopped the rolling outages at about 11:30 a.m., spokesman Bill Norton said. He said he did not know how long it would take to restore power to everyone, although power is coming back up to about 10,000 customers at a time.
