SAN ANTONIO – Power has been restored to thousands of residents in Bandera and Gillespie counties who experienced power outages on Friday morning amid freezing temperatures.
“We had an equipment failure at the Medina Lake substation,” Bandera Electric Cooperative Chief Administrative Officer John Padalino said. “That piece of equipment served over 1,400 homes. When that equipment failed, we tried to shift those homes to a different substation at the time.”
In a statement on Friday afternoon, the Bandera Electric Cooperative said the utility is experiencing “unprecedented” demand and equipment failures due to the freeze.
Earlier Friday, the utility announced that it was implementing rolling outages in Bandera, Pipe Creek and Wharton’s Dock. BEC said they will attempt to keep outages limited to 30 minutes.
Due to the high energy demand and to maintain the integrity of our electric grid, BEC will have rolling outages in the Bandera, Pipe Creek, and Wharton's Dock areas. We will attempt to keep outages limited to 30 minutes.
— Bandera Electric Cooperative (@BanderaElectric) December 23, 2022
We appreciate your patience. pic.twitter.com/5Fo2L1GLkd
“(The demand) made it very problematic to shift those number of homes to a different substation,” Padalino said. “When we tried to shift that load, other equipment along the line, kind of upstream from there, started tripping out because it became overloaded. It took us through the morning to reset all that equipment.”
As of 1 p.m., fewer than 500 people in Bandera and Medina Counties were without power. Dozens of BEC customers in Kendall and Kerr were also without power.
The full statement reads:
Click here to see an outage map from BEC.
The Central Texas Electric Cooperative in Fredericksburg said residents there also experienced power outages, but crews have located the problem and are working on repairs.
Power for most of the major outages was restored by 10:30 a.m.
Click here to see an outage map from CTEC.
CPS Energy in San Antonio has not reported major outages.
See the CPS Energy outage map here.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has said there are enough resources to meet the demand, but local utility companies may experience some issues.
People who are experiencing a power outage should contact their local power provider, ERCOT says.
Click here to see the outage map of Texas.
5:05AM FRI: Some power outages this morning. 200 customers are seeing issues in Bexar Co, but bigger numbers are being reported in Bandera and Gillespie Co. These are not widespread grid issues, but rather localized problems. Crews are working hard to get power restored. pic.twitter.com/H2k0bafEJU
— Justin Horne (@Justin_Horne) December 23, 2022
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