Jefferson County’s Significant Population Growth

One of the significant challenges we face at Appalachian Electric is the population growth in Jefferson County. While Sevier County gets the lion’s share of the attention for growth, Jefferson County is no slouch when it comes to people moving into our area.

Here is a chart of the 7.6% Population Growth from 2010 to 2022:

You can easily see that these numbers will put a strain on the best laid infrastructure plans. The additional demands on the electrical grid are noticeable, particularly on very cold and very hot days. Last Christmas you may remember that we had several days of 0-degree Fahrenheit temperatures, and we narrowly avoided a TVA Power Outage. Fortunately, the various Cooperatives in the TVA system were able to manage the high demand with relatively minor rolling outages of a few hours, and not everyone was affected – which would have been the case if TVA had gone to a Level 6 Outage.

We should not be in this condition, ever, and we can lay this near miss at the feet of those that want to reduce our coal-fired base load plants. This is not the fault of the various cooperatives, but I would encourage you to contact TVA and your congressional representative and Senators to let them know that leaving people without power that need it for CPAP machines and other medical devices, just because someone thinks that a windmill will replace a coal-fired power plant, is unacceptable.

Here is a chart of the relative age of the population in Jefferson County:

As you can see, the largest age groups are 50-64 and above 65. These are the people most likely to need and require medical devices. Power outages significantly impact their well-being, and we should do everything within our means to make sure that they are cared for and have highly reliable power service. To do any less is criminal, from my point of view.