ERCOT says limited cuts can occur overnight due to snow and cold temperatures

AUSTIN, Texas – Although many CPS Energy customers have had their power restored, Texas Electric Reliability Council says there is still the possibility of some limited outage Thursday evening or Friday morning due to cold weather .

However, ERCOT said in a statement on Friday that it expects more power generation to be available.

“The generating units that were online this morning have remained in operation throughout the day,” Dan Woodfin, senior director of operations for the ERCOT system, said in a written statement. “With the constant generation, we hope there are more generations available.”

Even though the snow is coming to an end, there will still be temperatures below freezing, snow and ice all night and into the morning, which can lead to limited fall. These interruptions will help keep the network stable as usage increases, according to ERCOT.

According to the CPS Energy stop map, around 7pm on Thursday, there are 215 active outages and 5,103 customers without electricity. These numbers are subject to change overnight.

Announcements

Those without electricity can be included in one of these three categories, according to ERCOT:

• Areas outside due to ice storm damage to the distribution system

• Areas that were out of service due to the energy emergency load shed that needs to be manually restored (i.e. send a crew to the location to re-energize the line)

• Large industrial facilities that voluntarily disconnected to help during this energy emergency

As of 6:30 p.m. Thursday, ERCOT said about 36,000 MW of generation remain in forced shutdown due to this winter weather event. Of these, approximately 21,400 MW are thermal generation and the rest are wind and solar.

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