AUSTIN, Texas — Austin Energy is asking customers in southwest Austin to conserve energy until 8 pm Friday to prevent a repeat of the power outage in the area Thursday night.
As temperatures soared near one hundred in the Oak Hill area of southwest Austin, Austin Energy’s CEO Bob Kahn asked customers to conserve energy because of Thursday’s power outages, when about 6,400 people had their lights and air conditioning knocked out by a problem Austin Energy is still diagnosing. What we do know is that a transformer at a substation went offline. “With the hot temperatures that equipment could overload, causing more outages,” he told reporters.
“We don’t get know what the issue is that’s causing the outage at the substation in southwest Austin outage. We believe something may have caused a fault, but we won’t know that until we continue to do tests,” said Austin Energy chief operating officer Lisa Martin.
If Austin Energy cannot get the transformer online again, they are bringing in a temporary transformer – – but that takes 24 hours to set up.
Austin Energy held a press conference this morning at city hall to ask for conservation measures and explain the two outages this week, including the power outage in East Austin Wednesday that left about 7-thousand customers in the dark. Austin Energy says that was caused by the heat and the demand overloaded the infrastructure – and told CBS Austin that has been permanently fixed.
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“Going back to 2021 there have been a number of power outages as you know between Austin Energy, ERCOT, and Oncor. What are you saying to people who are saying we’re tired of this?” I asked Martin. “Absolutely, we understand your frustration. We live in Austin too. we experience the outages too,” she answered.
All customers who lost power in southwest Austin Thursday have since been restored after the utility routed energy around the failed transformer. But Austin Energy CEO Bob Kahn told reporters high demand could overload the temporary fix and that is why the utility is asking people to take conservation measures like raising the thermostat a few degrees and avoid using big appliances like your oven.
“We are working around the clock to make sure that those customers that are, have a permanent solution,” Kahn said.
Since this week Austin has seen multiple outages in extreme heat, I reached out to the Public Utility Commission and was told they have contacted Austin Energy for more information about what is going wrong.