{"id":140604,"date":"2026-02-02T13:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T13:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/140604\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T13:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T13:13:08","slug":"central-florida-utility-companies-urge-customers-to-conserve-power-during-freezing-cold-blast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/140604\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Florida utility companies urge customers to conserve power during freezing cold blast"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Utility companies in Central Florida sent a message to customers<\/a>, urging them to reduce and conserve energy use Monday morning when demand for electricity was anticipated to be the highest.<\/p>\n

Customers were asked to reduce energy use, especially early Monday morning<\/a> when most of Central Florida woke up to temperatures in the 20s.<\/p>\n

Customers can do these things to help conserve energy use:<\/p>\n

Set thermostats to lowest comfortable temperature (every degree below 68 saves energy)<\/p>\n

Increase thermostat gradually, if needed, by no more than 2 degrees at a time.<\/p>\n

Use space heaters safely by keeping at least 3 feet of clearance, plugging them into the wall and turning them off when sleeping or leaving a room.<\/p>\n

Delay charging your EV until after morning peak.<\/p>\n

Running large appliances during the later part of the day.<\/p>\n

Turn off any unnecessary devices.<\/p>\n

OUC said in a news release that it urges customers to conserve energy from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., saying in part:<\/p>\n

This alert was issued because OUC is part of a larger, regional, state and a national energy network that has been under heavy strain over the past week from Winter Storm Fern, and this weekend\u2019s arctic blast. Thank you to both our residential and commercial customers for coming together collectively to reduce strain on the grid. <\/p>\n

Other utility providers echoed those concerns. Winter Park Electric is also asking customers to limit power use during peak hours and said the city plans to temporarily disable public electric vehicle chargers on Monday during high-demand periods.<\/p>\n

Duke Energy also asked customers to reduce energy use from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. to help avoid potential outages:<\/p>\n

Several days of sustained low temperatures are driving unusually high energy demand in our area & available power supplies are currently very limited. You can help us protect the electric grid & avoid possible temporary outages by cutting back on nonessential energy use Monday morning from 5am-9am.<\/p>\n

This kind of cold is rare in the Orlando area and last occurred during the <\/a>historic December 2010 cold outbreak.<\/p>\n

Breaking News Alerts<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Utility companies in Central Florida sent a message to customers, urging them to reduce and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[519,3401,6307,28,139,141,140,6337,5592,221],"class_list":["post-140604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-cold","tag-duke-energy","tag-electricity","tag-florida","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-ouc","tag-power","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}