Power Restoration Continues Into Thursday Evening, Generation Holding Steady

AUSTIN, TX – While emergency conditions remain in effect, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has been able to balance generation and load on the electric system without issuing any additional outages throughout the day.

“The generating units that were online this morning have remained on throughout the day,” said ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin. “With generation holding steady, we are hopeful that more generation will continue to become available.”

Due to more extreme cold weather, snow and ice, there is a possibility that some limited outages could be needed later this evening or in the morning to keep the grid stable when load increases at these times. 

Meanwhile, electric companies continue to restore power in the field as quickly and safely as possible.

Customers that remain without power likely fall into one of these three categories:

• Areas out due to ice storm damage on the distribution system
• Areas that were taken out of service due to the energy emergency load shed that need to be restored manually (i.e., sending a crew to the location to reenergize the line)
• Large industrial facilities that voluntarily went offline to help during this energy emergency

As of 6:30 PM, nearly 36,000 MW of generation remains on forced outage due to this winter weather event. Of that, approximately 21,400 MW is thermal generation and the rest is wind and solar.