AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- More than 400,000 electric customers across Central Texas were without power Tuesday morning, as sub-freezing temperatures continued to grip the region - and a new threat of additional wintry precipitation is just hours away.
More than 218,000 Austin Energy customers, or about 43 percent of the utility's customer base, remained without power as of 10:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. Many of those customers lost power early Monday morning, as the utility implemented its "rolling outages" plan at the direction of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.
Officials on Monday said the "rolling outages" plan came to a complete stop because of the sheer amount of power that ERCOT requested. The utility started with non-critical circuits across the city; but once those customers were cut off, there weren't enough circuits that did not have critical loads to "rotate" the outages around to.
Around 7 a.m. Tuesday, Austin Energy said it was exploring its options in the downtown area, working with the Downtown Austin Alliance and commercial real estate managers to create additional conservation in the downtown area.
The utility addressed the downtown area in an additional statement Tuesday morning. "The downtown network is excluded for now from load shedding (power outages) during controlled outages mandated by ERCOT. This is a complicated, inter-connected network which includes critical buildings like the Dell Seton Medical Center, warming centers, the COVID-19 Alternate Care Site, Capitol Complex and Austin City Hall, as well as other critical infrastructure and government buildings. Shutting down the downtown network would also cut off electricity to these critical buildings, which may also house vital communications equipment."
