POWER OUTAGES REPORTED AROUND AREA FOLLOWING ARRIVAL OF COLD FRONT, HIGH WINDS

  

Power was restored at midnight to nearly 500 Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative members in Lee and Washington counties after an outage late Thursday night.

Bluebonnet said around 11 p.m. that it was making repairs to equipment that caused an outage along Highway 290, north of Ledbetter.  Approximately 489 members were affected.

Bluebonnet has also restored power to 295 members in Bastrop, Lee and Fayette counties after an outage caused by downed, damaged power lines in the Warda area, east of Smithville. 

Click here to view the Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative outage map.

Meanwhile, power has come back to San Bernard Electric Cooperative members in the Prairie View area after an outage triggering a loss of power to 309 members.  An outage for 71 members south of Waller has also been resolved. 

Click here to view the San Bernard Electric Cooperative outage map.

The cold front Thursday brought with it high winds that are expected to be a contributing factor to outages on the local level. 

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) dashboard shows that so far, the state’s energy capacity has kept up with demand, although forecasted demand projections have increased from ERCOT’s initial estimates. 

On Wednesday, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said the highest demand was expected this morning at around 70,000 megawatts, but the state surpassed that Thursday evening.  The highest predicted demand is still this morning between 8 and 9 a.m.