Christmas 1989 was almost upon us, times were good, and everyone was in the holiday mood and ready for a long Christmas weekend. Holiday lights were shining brightly everywhere, the ideal weekend was ahead. Saturday was December 23, Christmas Eve December 24 and Christmas was on Monday, December 25.

At the Energy Control Center in St. Petersburg Gary Nagel, Manager of Power Supply had done the long range planning that took place as an everyday practice. The weather outlook was for a cool weekend but nothing out of the ordinary. Nagel, like many Florida Power employees, was preparing to take some well earned vacation. Thursday, December 21, Roger Schooley, Director Energy Control called a staff meeting to insure all was in order for the long holiday weekend, proper staffing, generation and transmission planning all accomplished. All looked good. Linda Brousseau, Supervisor of Power Supply would be on call for any potential generation problems and Rey Garcia was Dispatch Supervisor on call. Chuck Harper, Senior Dispatching Supervisor would join Nagel and countless other FPC employees as they left Thursday evening on vacation. Remember that weather report that on Thursday morning had indicated a cool but normal weekend aproaching…..by Friday evening December 22 all was about to change.

About 8 PM Friday evening a call came into the Generation Dispatcher from FPC’s private weather forecast service. A cold front that was supposed to stop in Georgia was gong to reach north Florida and may even make it to central Florida. Sanford Buckles who worked in Power Supply was called in late Friday to prepare a new system load forecast, WOW, was all that could be said. Linda Brousseau was notified and additional generation was scheduled on line for Saturday to meet the projected new higher load forecast. The surprise was about to hit us all. On Saturday morning December 23 cold northwest winds and a biting rain were blowing over central Florida. Early Saturday a new weather forecast came in. The cold front would bring in much colder air than projected Friday night and, and the cold front would reach into, and past south Florida, now effecting the giant Florida Power & Light Company headquartered in Miami. FPLs dispatch center under its new Director, Marty Mennes also prepared for action.
The new forecast now called for tempatures in St. Petersburg to dip as low as the high 30s by Saturday evening and the upper 20s by Christmas Eve morning.

Unaware of ECC events, vacationing Nagel, Harper and their wives were having breakfast at a Largo restaurant. Harper commented that every time the door opened it seemed to be getting colder, about that time Nagel’s emergency beeper went off, it was ECC. "Gary, come to work, we see a potential problem on the way", was the message. Truer words were never spoken.
During the day Saturday a general alert was declared by ECC, all generating plants and stations were notified and fully manned for continues operation. Transmission Operations was prepared, Distribution Operations was fully prepared. Statewide emergency operations were readied. At ECC the generation dispatcher was matching generation to load, purchasing power as was available and starting CTs as necessary. Early in the evening Nagel could see FPC would not be able to meet the system load requirements; senior management was notified all the way up to Alan Kessler, President of FPC.

Rey Garcia looked over at Nagel Saturday evening and declared, “Gary, we’re out of generation”. With that, Load Management, voltage Control and all other options were used. Before the evening was over, 900 MWs of load would be ordered off. Only the second time in FPC history standard customer load would be cut. By 1AM all customer load had been restored with the exception of load management.

At 4AM on Christmas Eve morning Chuck Harper relived Garcia and prepared for the day time operation. Garcia’s parting comment was, “Every generator we have is on line at full load, including CT’s, all load management and voltage control is active, see ya”.

About 4:50AM Alan Kessler called, “Chuck, when do you project us shedding load this morning”? The response, from Harper was, “We just dropped the first 200 MWs sir, another 50 is on the way”. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes," Kessler responded.  Before the morning was over more then 1800 MWs of customer load would be shed. No power could be purchased as every power company in Florida and to the north was experiencing the same situation. Sunday night, Christmas Eve another 1000 MWs of customer load was shed. On Monday morning Christmas Day an additional 900 MW of load would be shed.

Nothing in Florida Power Company history had matched anything like this. Alan Kessler would later write of how proud he was of all Florida Power employees who worked night and day in extreme cold and under trying circumstances for the benefit of our customers.

The Florida Public Service Commission held hearings on what could be done if ever similar circumstances would occur. New statewide power procedures for emergencies were put into action under the guidance of the Florida Coordinating Group (FCG).
Dispatchers at ECC with names like Dick Hall, Leland Doss, Harold Bush, Frank Witkowski, Doug Garrett, Chuck Gallagher and Jon Douberly would reminisces years later of the event that changed forever power operations in Florida.

It all happened twenty years ago this year, and most of us retired FPC employees remember it very well, - So where were you the Christmas the lights went off?