ERCOT says limited interruptions are possible overnight due to snow, icy temperatures

AUSTIN, Texas While many CPS Energy customers have restored their power, the Texas Electric Reliability Board says there is still a possible limit on outages on Thursday night or Friday morning due to the cold weather.

However, ERCOT said in a release on Friday that it hopes more energy generation will be available.

“The generating units that were online this morning continued all day,” Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of systems operations, said in a written statement. “With generation that is steady, we are hopeful that more generation will remain available.”

Although the snow is coming to an end, there will still be below freezing, snow and ice during the night until the morning, which could possibly lead to the limited interruptions. According to ERCOT, these interruptions will help keep the network stable as usage increases.

According to CPS Energy’s outage card, there were 215 active outages and 5,103 customers without power at around 19:00 on Thursday. These numbers may change during the night.

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According to ERCOT, those without electricity can fall into one of these three categories:

• Areas due to ice storm damage to the distribution system

• Areas that have been shut down due to the emergency shed for energy that needs to be repaired manually (ie to send a crew to the site to re-use the line)

• Major industrial facilities that have voluntarily gone offline to help during this energy emergency

As of 18:30 on Thursday, ERCOT said that nearly 36,000 MW generation is still being forced to interrupt due to this winter weather event. Of that, about 21,400 MW is heat generation and the rest is wind and solar power.

RELATED: ERCOT suspends role disruptions, but CPS Energy customers without power may see no relief for days