ERCOT Says Best Case Is Short, Rotating Outages By Late Wednesday or Early Thursday
(CBSDFW.COM) - The Electric Reliability Council of Texas provided an update Wednesday morning regarding power restoration efforts and gave a best-case scenario on returning to normal operation.
Over 3 million people are still without power throughout the state after a winter storm wreaked havoc on Sunday. Since then, dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills made the issue of power outages worse for residents.
Oncor's, which delivers electricity to much of North Texas, outage map shows just over 620,000 of its total customers are affected by the power outages.
In the Wednesday morning update, ERCOT, which manages the state's power grid, said the best-case scenario in regards to returning to normalcy is beginning short, rotating outages
"The best case at this point is that today or tomorrow we're able to at least get back down to the point where all the consumers are experiencing outages that are no longer than say 30 minutes to an hour at a time," said Dan Woodfin, ERCOT director of system operations. "So we're actually rotating through people. They're able to be turned on for awhile."
"I think that's the best case. I don't think that it's likely that we're going to have enough available, based on our forecast and the information we are getting from the generators, that we're going to have everybody back on today or before at least the morning peak tomorrow," he added.
According to ERCOT CEO Bill Magness, the time it takes for the power to come back on will partially be dependent on how quickly the temperatures warm back up. He said natural gas supply is affected by the frigid temperatures.
Magness also said ERCOT has tried to import power from ties with the eastern U.S. grid and Mexico. However, those areas are now dealing with their own emergencies, so those efforts have halted.
During the update, Magness also responded to Gov. Greg Abbott's call for ERCOT leaders to resign amid an investigation.
"Whatever the future holds, the priority for us is to get the power back on. The assessment of how we did can be done after we get the power back on," Magness said.