WACO, Texas (KWTX) – Electrical outages in much of Texas could continue at least through Tuesday, Texas Electric Reliability Council officials said Monday morning.
In a call with media representatives, the system’s senior director of operations, Dan Woodfin, said ERCOT had reached a new ever-high maximum demand and that the system might not have been able to withstand the load.
Woodfin acknowledged that there has been a planned disruption of up to 45 minutes in many Texas locations. He did not say when that energy could be restored, but said they work 24 hours a day to do so.
Around 1:25 a.m., according to a press release, ERCOT went into emergency conditions and started shutdowns at that time. They say that at that time about 10,500 MW of customer load was launched into the system. That is enough to serve approximately two million households.
However, extreme weather conditions forced several energy sources to shut down at the time, according to the statement.
This means more than 30,000 MW of generating power.
During the call, officials said this is the longest period of time rotational interruptions have been made.
Right now, about two million people remain powerless in Texas, many of them in central Texas.
ERCOT asks everyone to save as much energy as possible, to reduce the stress on the mains while they work so that everyone is back online.
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