WACO, Texas (KWTX) – Power interruptions in much of Texas may continue until at least Tuesday, officials at the Texas Electric Reliability Council said Monday morning.
In a call with media representatives, Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin said that ERCOT has reached a new peak in high demand and that the system may not have been able to handle the load.
Woodfin acknowledged that a planned break of up to 45 minutes was pushed far beyond that in several places in Texas. He declined to say when the power could be restored, but said they are continuously working on it.
Around 1:25 am, according to a press release, ERCOT entered into emergency conditions and initiated continuous blackouts at that time. They say that, at that point, about 10,500 MW of customer load was eliminated from the system. This is enough energy to serve approximately two million households.
However, extreme weather conditions forced several sources of energy to go offline at that time, according to the statement.
This is equivalent to more than 30,000 MW of energy generated.
During the call, officials said this was the longest period of rotational outages that had occurred.
At the moment, about two million people remain without power in Texas, many of them in central Texas.
ERCOT is asking everyone to conserve as much energy as possible, to reduce stress on the power grid as they work to get everyone back online.
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