CPS Energy says its customers will continue to be affected by power outages today. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has required rolling outages as the winter storm overloads the energy grid. About two-thirds of the CPS Energy grids will keep having rotating outages today. The rest are dedicated to critical services such as hospitals or police departments. As of 6 a.m. today 300,000 customers were without service in the San Antonio area.
The company released a statement on its website:
"The state grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT,) called for an Emergency Energy Alert Stage 3, otherwise known as load shedding. This is a last resort to, as Governor Gregg Abbott put it, avoid large scale blackouts and damage to the grid. These are no longer rolling outages. They are controlled outages and happening at a large volume and for longer sustained periods of time.
If you are currently experiencing an outage, it is possible that the outage will continue for longer periods. If you have power, it is possible you may experience a power outage, so please plan accordingly. Seek shelter if you need assistance. After exhausting all other options, these additional controlled service interruptions are a last resort, and a step we take only when necessary to safeguard continued reliability of the statewide ERCOT grid."
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