FAQs & Troubleshooting

MISO is a not-for-profit, member-based organization that ensures reliable, cost-effective delivery of electricity across all or parts of 15 U.S. states and one Canadian province. It is one of the nation’s largest regional transmission organizations. In cooperation with stakeholders, MISO manages approximately 65,000 miles of high-voltage transmission and 200,000 megawatts of power-generating resources across its footprint.

Conway Corp entered the Midcontinent Independent System Operator market in December 2013 and is part of their southern region. Being a part of MISO allows Conway Corp to better coordinate and optimize generation and transmission for the benefit of Conway Corp customers.

We provide as much notice as possible to customers in advance of a load shed event. Unfortunately, we are not always afforded time to do that. Load shedding is time critical, and we must comply immediately. We do communicate to customers as soon as possible when we believe there could be conditions leading to load shed.

We are typically provided little notice and must comply with an order from MISO for shedding load to help prevent longer, widespread uncontrolled outages. Click here to learn more about MISO’s emergency messaging and the associated actions their members take.

Required outages during a load shed event limit power to some customers who are grouped together. Power in the group’s electricity conductors is turned on and off to their homes or businesses. We typically rotate the temporary outages until the load shed is complete to minimize the burden on any one group of customers.

The groups are determined by the amount of power – or megawatts – that must be shed at the time of the event and can vary greatly depending on the current conditions.

We do our best to avoid critical customers including essential public safety services, health facilities and water systems.

As one group of customers completes its outage cycle, the next group is removed from service and the first is returned to service. In most cases, customers will lose power for approximately 30 minutes.

Depending on the type of constraint and given impacts to the grid, either Conway Corp or MISO will initiate steps to shed load. For example, if MISO initiates, then Conway Corp must immediately begin shedding load under emergency conditions. This is a requirement to avoid catastrophic grid failures which could result in prolonged power outages.

This could happen at any time of the day or night, and we are given little warning time. It is only done in emergency situations as a last resort, but we must comply to prevent longer, widespread uncontrolled outages.

Not necessarily. The number of customers affected will depend on the severity of the situation. The more load shed required, the more customers will be impacted. Shedding load is always a last resort, but if needed, it could affect different customers depending on the cause or situation.

Conway Corp’s grid is managed by our reliability coordinator Midcontinent Independent System Operator. A system-wide load shed is initiated only by MISO as a result of an imbalance of supply and demand of electricity and required to protect the bulk electric system – which is interconnected across the country.

Such a scenario could occur due to extreme weather like a hurricane, winter storm or unusually high or low temperatures. Conway Corp has only been required to shed load across our service area once since we entered the MISO market in late 2013, and this load shed occurred during the extreme cold weather brought by Winter Storm Uri in February 2021. Uri impacted much of the country, resulting in record-breaking low temperatures. We have asked customers to voluntarily curtail their electric usage to prevent load shedding, and in most cases voluntary reductions work.

Shedding load is required when the demand for electricity approaches supply, creating the potential for a dangerous imbalance. It’s a way to help reduce power demand by turning power off to some customers for a shorter time to help prevent longer, larger outages. The immediate reduction of power demand is critical to prevent a catastrophic, extended failure of the larger electrical grid.

Power generation and load must always match up or remain balanced – otherwise the grid’s integrity will be compromised. There are strict standards that utilities must follow to maintain this balance.  Shedding load is always a last resort to prevent more extensive and prolonged power outages that could severely affect the reliability of the power grid.

When new service is established or a change is made to your cable service, pro-rata charges will appear on your bill. Cable, Internet and telephone services are billed in advance. The pro-rata charge is the bill amount for the number of days between your sign-up date and the date of your regular billing cycle. Future bills will show the full standard monthly amount unless you make further changes to your account.

For real-world single device maximum speeds on a SuperPod one hop away from the gateway pod, you can expect up to 400-450 Mbps. Maximum device WiFi speed is dependent on several factors such as:

• Internet connection speed
• Overall network traffic
• Number and type of hops to the gateway pod
• Type of network application
• Environmental radio interference and signal strength of the connections
• WiFi capabilities of the connected device

Quick, repeating Double blinks – Pod is waiting for optimization to finish: You will also see “Optimizing your network” message in the app as well. Optimizations usually take a 2-3 minutes, depending on how many pods are connected. Optimizations can be triggered by a change in your environment such as high levels of interference, but will also happen overnight and immediately after initial setup.

Quick Double blinks – Pod is being named: If you are in the process of naming this pod by scanning the pod.

Green slow continuous pulse/breathing (dim to bright) – Pod is trying to connect with the cloud and depending on the circumstances could mean the following:

This is normal before adding the pod to your account, the slow pulse will continue until the pod is added to the account and establishes a connection to the cloud.

The pod has lost connection to the rest of your network, which could be a result of extremely poor signal to other pods, especially if the other pods are still online and you have not received a lost internet connectivity notification.

Internet connectivity is lost. This is will be followed by a “Network is offline” notification. Try the app Self-Help tool to see if that fixes the problem.

If you can’t see all the pods being claimed in your Plume® App and if you see a slow LED pulsing on the pod at the same time, contact Conway Corp support for assistance.

Red rapid continuous blinking – There may be an issue with the onboard software. Contact Conway Corp support for assistance.

Red slow continuous blinking – Possible fan failure. Contact Conway Corp support for assistance.