Overall, about 180-thousand households were without power Monday morning.  The rolling black out lasted two-and-a-half hours.  Power officials tell KPEL news the order to pull the plug this morning was very rare.

Rolling blackouts normally take place in the dead heat of summer when power is tapped out by heavy demand. 

Terry Huval the Director of Lafayette Utility Systems says in his sixteen years with the company he's never been ordered to cut off power in cold temperatures until now. 

Acadiana power companies were ordered by transmission regulators of the Southwest Power Pool to interupt power to  avoid a massive power outage like the Northeast black-out of 2003.

 All of Acadiana's power supply is tied into Cleco and Entergy's transmission lines.  The Entergy line went down.

A reported seventeen parishes were affected by the strain on the system.

While improvements to the LUS, Entergy and Cleco systems are underway, those upgrades are not expected to be completed until June of 2012.

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