LAREDO, Tex. (KGNS) - Tony Arce from AEP Spoke at Monday’s city press conference to let residents know what they can expect.
He says that they have not been given any authority to begin restoration from any of the outages.
While he says this is an unfortunate situation, it is consistent with what’s happening in other parts of the state.
“The state of Texas has 3.7 million outages at this point and Laredo we’re holding at about 27,000 outages. I cannot stress enough the need to continue to conserve. We don’t want that number to go up.”
Arce says that the idea was to rotate the outages, but the amount of load and load shed has prevented them from practicing the rotations.
With the expected forecast to be the same, Arce says the call for conservation is critical.
Some tips for conservation include:
- to keep your windows closed
- to not use any major appliances during the day as those heating loads are extremely stressful on the state grid
- and to keep your thermostat at 68 degrees.
Earlier on Monday, we spoke with a couple of residents who tell us who they managed to stay warm during their power outage.
“This is the third time it’s gone off,” said an anonymous caller. “It went off at about 8:55 a.m. and that was the last time and it’s still off now.”
Starting at around 1:30 Monday morning, more than 17,000 Laredo residents reported a power outage in areas including south Laredo near Lomas Del Sur, Cuatro Vientos, Concord Hills, Santa Maria, Park, and over by Lake Casa Blanca.
Hours later, by the time it reached 6 a.m. there were at least 20,000 outages. As of 5 p.m. on Monday afternoon, AEP reported 25,000 outages.
“This is not a local capacity issue, this is a state ordered low shed,” said Tony Arce.
Tony Arce, from American Electric Power says these local rolling power outages are usually fixed within an hour, but this time they are are lasting longer than expected.
“The weather is such at this point that we’ve been ordered to not rotate the outages. These outages are in place until further notice.”
But it’s also leaving many residents with not knowing what to resort to in order to stay warm.
“Yes, it’s cold luckily, we have gas grills and we’re running those right now and we’re also boiling water, that’s how we’re staying warm,” said a caller.
AEP says the last time a rolling outage like this happened was 10 years ago, but not because of cold weather, but because of the heat.
AEP also says surrounding areas like Zapata, Bruni, and Hebbronville are also being affected.
AEP also issued a notice saying that its too early to project when the situation will ease and that customers should prepare to be without power for the rest of the day.
They say ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, is requesting state utilities increase the amount of power removed from their systems.
They go on to say that while these controlled outages are meant to be limited in duration, the condition of the system is requiring they be in effect longer.
That means if you are currently experiencing an outage you will likely be out of power for an extended period of time while the emergency continues.
Copyright 2021 KGNS. All rights reserved.
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February 16, 2021 at 12:15AM
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Emergency controlled outages to occur on Monday and Tuesday - KGNS
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