DALLAS – More than 1 million Texans are without power Monday as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the agency that oversees the state’s power grid, initiated rotating outages after declaring that the state had reached emergency conditions amid extreme weather conditions.
The outages began at 1:25 a.m. Monday, ERCOT said, and they are expected to last throughout the day and into Tuesday.
In his first statement about statewide electricity outages that began overnight, Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday afternoon that officials are working to get power back online and residential consumers are being prioritized.
“Many power generation companies facilities froze overnight and shut down their ability to generate power. They are working to get power back on line,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a tweet. “This includes the natural gas & coal generators.”
The Republican governor assured people the Texas power grid “has not been compromised.”
At its highest point, ERCOT said it removed 10,500 megawatts of power from the load — enough to power about 2 million homes.
There are now more than 30,000 megawatts of generation that has been forced off the system. The outages are controlled, temporary interruptions of electrical service that rotate through different parts of the electric grid.
“Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness in a written statement.
As of 12:25 p.m., there are 8,049 active outages across the state affecting more than 1.2 million customers, according to Oncor’s storm center website that tracks power outages.
Oncor said the outages typically last 15-45 minutes but may vary by area. In a tweet Monday morning Oncor said the outage lengths were “significantly extended” due to the severity of the demand and that outages may last hours.
“We are doing everything possible to respond to each of these power emergency events,” Oncor said.
ERCOT said in a call to media Monday that it expects rotating outages to last throughout Monday and until at least Tuesday morning.
Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of system operations, said the outages, which are typically rotated by electric providers, could not be rotated because of the number of outages that needed to be conducted.
According to ERCOT, there is no maximum length of time where customers can be without power before it must be turned back on, and there is no time frame for when the generators can begin generating power again.
“How long the outages stay in place depends on how quickly we can get additional generation back online in order to meet that demand,” Woodfin said. “So really that’s a function of how quickly those generators can come back on.”
Woodfin said the unprecedented weather placed pressure on the grid, and the outages are part of the overall plan to prevent a total blackout.
“We have tried to work with the generators to develop best practices for winterization,” he said. “They have been put in place. But this event was well beyond the design parameters for even an extreme Texas winter which we would normally plan for. The result is what we’re seeing today.”
System operators work in the command center of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas in Taylor. About 90 percent of Texas' electric load is managed by ERCOT.
Operators, like Oncor, typically rotate controlled outages around neighborhoods and avoid critical areas where there are hospitals and emergency responders, Woodfin said. They’re bound to those areas, which is why some neighborhoods are experiencing frequent and long-lasting outages, he said.
“Because of the amount of load shed that we’ve required in order to balance supply and demand, they really don’t have enough options to be able to rotate between different areas so they’re basically having to take all of the areas that don’t meet one of those critical or technical criteria,” Woodfin said. “They can’t rotate through them and still reduce the demand by the amount that we need that we need to maintain reliability.”
The cold weather also caused commercial power outages and downed lines for Spectrum customers. In a notification sent to its customers, the interview, phone and TV service provider said services would be restored after several hours.
Matt Varble of Las Colinas said his power went out at 1:30 a.m. Monday and came back on twice for less than an hour. The second time it went out was about 3:30 a.m., and it hadn’t returned as of 7 a.m.
“It’s starting to get very cold inside my house,” said Varble, who has two dogs living with him. “I lived in the north for a very long time and nothing like this has ever happened when I lived in New York, Ohio and Illinois.”
Richard Garcia said his home in Plano has been without power since 4:45 a.m., but it went out at least once at around 1 or 2 a.m.
Garcia was woken up when his CPAP machine stopped working, he said.
“I haven’t even attempted to even try to use it again since about the one or two o’clock hour when it first happened,” he said. “I haven’t been back asleep because I’ve just been checking on the house and we have a 3-year-old and stuff.”
Garcia said his wife has been using Oncor’s text message system to report that their home had been without power for more than 45 minutes. Oncor replied at 6:30 a.m. that they were trying to see when the power would be back on.
At about 7:40 a.m., Garcia’s thermostat read 58 degrees.
“It’s cold,” he said. “My wife and my 3-year-old are in the bed together and they’ve got layers and layers of blankets on.”
By 11:30 a.m., Garcia said his family had to move into their car to have a heater.
Amy Hull, who lives in north Fort Worth on the border of Saginaw, said her power has been out for at least 3.5 hours. Hull said she would feel less frustrated if there was any information on when power would be restored, but the Oncor website has not been working for updates.
“These things are easier if we can at least feel in the loop,” Hull said. “The lack of information is deeply unsettling.”
Oncor did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The last time ERCOT initiated systemwide rotating outages was Feb. 2, 2011, only the third time in its history. That was around when a snowstorm hit North Texas just before Cowboys Stadium hosted Super Bowl XLV.
ERCOT officials try to prevent rotating outages in energy emergency alert levels one and two by tapping into additional megawatts that become available once an emergency is declared. ERCOT triggers its Emergency Alert System when operating reserves drop to 2,300 megawatts.
ERCOT initiates rotating outages when the reserves get down to 1,000 megawatts and aren’t expected to recover within 30 minutes, and all the additional resources have been tapped, said Woodfin.
ERCOT officials anticipated that demand would shatter the winter peak record of 65,915 megawatts and reach summer levels, which are typically higher as people run air conditioning in their homes and businesses.
A winter storm warning expired for North Texas at 9 a.m. Monday. But with wind chills expected to drop to as low as -20 degrees Monday and -15 degrees Tuesday, the National Weather Service issued a wind chill warning for all of Dallas-Fort Worth and surrounding areas until noon Tuesday.
At 6 a.m. Monday, the National Weather Service measured 4 inches of snow at DFW International Airport after the area took on several inches throughout the day Sunday.
Campuses across North Texas were empty Monday — many schools were already out for the President’s Day holiday, many more classes were canceled due to the weather.
Just before 10 a.m., David Markson, 57, bundled up and hopped across Park Row Drive to take a photo of his snow-covered home. “I’ve lived here almost 29 years,” he said, “and it has never been this cold.”
His thermometer read 6.8 degrees, he said, just a few degrees warmer than what his son was reporting at his own home in Bozeman, Montana. Markson said he hadn’t had a power outage yet, and a gas heater was helping heat the home. He also carried a space heater from room to room, he said, and had a big pot of beef stew to keep warm.”
There’s no reason to go out,” he said, waving at the several inches of white stuff covering his driveway. “I mean, look at the street.”
Temperatures will fall into the teens for highs on Monday, according to KXAS-TV, and low temperatures Tuesday morning will likely in the single digits. There is another chance of snow on Wednesday.
The governor issued a statewide disaster declaration Friday, and the state’s Transportation, Public Safety and Military department and other agencies have been deployed to respond to the storm.
The White House also issued a federal emergency declaration for the state, and Abbott, who requested the declaration Saturday, thanked President Joe Biden.
Abbott also activated National Guard units to assist state agencies with tasks including rescuing stranded drivers.
(Dallas Morning News staff writers Allie Morris and Charlie Scudder contributed to this report.)
