Posted on 02/02/2011 2:42:01 PM PST by Racehorse
The state's electrical grid operator said the need for rolling power outages has passed, but asked residents to continue to conserve power, especially during peak demand, between 6 and 10 p.m.
CPS Energy said its rolling outages are over, and the utility is now working to restore power from weather-related outages not connected to the planned blackouts.
Spokeswoman Lisa Lewis said teams across the city are working as quickly as possible and that about 5,000 to 8,000 households were still without power as of 2 p.m. Wednesday.
She said the utility is also preparing for ways to minimize outages in the coming days.
The planned outages, which started at about 6 a.m. in San Antonio and lasted up to an hour at a time, were triggered when more than 50 power plants stopped working Tuesday night because of the cold weather.
By rotating outages, ERCOT said it prevented total blackouts across the state. It alerted utilities at 1:30 p.m. that they could suspend the planned outages.
Many CPS customers went several hours without power, due to weather conditions, the utility said.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst expressed frustration over the situation, pointing out demand was nowhere near the peak power capacity in the state.
Burst water pipes at two plants, Oak Grove and Sand Hill, forced the plants to cut power production, Dewhurst said he was told, and natural gas plants that should have provided back up had difficulty starting due to low pressure in the supply lines, also from the cold weather.
Comision Federal de Electricidad, Latin America's largest power company by sales, was reportedly sending 280 megawatts to Texas, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday afternoon.
(Excerpt) Read more at mysanantonio.com ...
Had only one blackout today in Austin. Last about 10 minutes.
20 minutes in Leander.
Based on the clocks and when power went out, my house was without power for six hours near 410 and 151.
Time to kill ERCOT and restore sanity to electricity management in Texas
Time to kill ERCOT and restore sanity to electricity management in Texas
Replace one government agency with another? What exactly would you consider an improvement?
Missed the black-outs - had the good sense to have a residence on the same part of the grid as the local assisted living center.
Churchill HS area - power cut at 6:45 this morning while I was in the shower. Finished in the dark. It was out for over 2 hours, went on for 15 minutes, then off for about 3 more hours.
I bought a propane heater today in case the idjits cut the power again tonight. For a few bucks, at least I know that wea’re not going to freeze our butts tonight or tomorrow...or for many years into the future.
We only had one, 6:15 to 1:30.
The good news is that since power was cut to so many residents in Texas, there was plenty of power for Jerry Jones stadium and for the Superbowl parties in Dallas and Fort Worth, all of which were exempt from the blackouts. They are also telling us that we should cut our thermostats to 65 because of natural gas shortages.
Time to fire the PUC, ERCOT, and the Railroad commission and all of the employees of each. And let them play the Superbowl in the dark.
Had to deal with 5 today in houston.
Unbelievable that we are literally 75 miles from a nuke power plant and we have rolling blackouts....
Say, maybe that's why I wasn't affected either. There's an assisted living center within half a block from where I live. I presumed there was some VIP government figure living on my street.
My niece, at home with her two infant sons, had two blackouts.
I lost power twice, once for over an hour and the second time was about 30 minutes. I think what is most upsetting, and CPS needs to answer, is that these were PLANNED outages and no one was given any notice ahead of time to make arrangements. Gas stations and other businesses were shut down too.
Twice here in Central Texas at 15 minutes each about 2 hours apart in the A.M.
Somebody’s got some explaining to do as this was not a problem last year when we had about the same temps for a couple of weeks straight.
Let THIS be a lesson to those foolish enough to buy electric cars! You will be STRANDED, unable to charge the battery, when the rolling blackouts hit YOUR neck of the woods!
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