| Austin American statesman
Water outage in Austin: Director updates city on service recovery
Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros gives an update on water outages on February 18, 2021. A city-wide notice on boiling water was issued on February 17,
Austin American statesman
More than 90% of Austin Energy customers have had power since Thursday afternoon, a warming development in the city’s ongoing battle against the winter storm – a battle that is now shifting to water and food among people without access to necessities.
A total of 40,969 Austin Energy customers were still without power from 14:00 on Thursday, compared to 220,000 earlier in the week – the peak when less than 60% of the city had power.
“Our crew, our teams, will not stop until every customer has power,” Jacqueline Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy, said Thursday.
Sargent said she could not say when power would be for everyone again. “I wish it was just as easy to get everyone online again as turning a switch or pressing a button, but it’s not,” she said.
Progress in restoring electricity began overnight when the state network – which is managed by the Texas Electricity Trust Board – enabled transmission owners such as Austin Energy to bring back any cargo they had previously dumped. Austin made every circuit available earlier this week, except for those running critical infrastructure such as hospitals and emergency stations.
The order to shed power was sent by ERCOT through the state due to 185 or more power plants – which use everything from gas to wind power – faltering or completely failing amid freezing temperatures earlier this week.
“We are at the point in restoring the load where we are allowing transmission owners to return loads they may have in connection with this load shedding event,” said Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of systems operations.
However, there was one caveat: some rotating interruptions will be needed over the next few days to keep the grid stable, Woodfin said.
According to poweroutage.us, there were 417,000 disruptions nationwide on Thursday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us.
As of 7 a.m. Thursday, approximately 81,000 Austin Energy customers were without power. Seven hours later, the number was reduced by half.
It is unclear when all customers will have energy and how much of it will not only be affected by ERCOT’s forced eclipse, but also due to the ice storm damage to power lines.
The areas with the most active interruptions – with more than 4,000 units – were the 78747 zip code in Southeast Austin and the 78746 zip code in West Lake Hills.
Austin Energy said it is the priority to restore customers in areas that have been the longest without it. A Twitter user from the Jollyville area of Northwest Austin said he was without power for nearly 80 hours before it was repaired Thursday morning.
Austin Energy is the leading electrical utility in the city, serving more than 512,000 customers, not their dependents and pets.
Crew responding to interruptions did so under sometimes hostile conditions and plagued by unhappy customers and hit with snowballs.
“This is not who we are,” Mayor Steve Adler said Wednesday.