Austin hopes to make big progress on Friday in regaining power

Power outages remained widespread in central Texas early Friday morning, but as temperatures were set to start rising rapidly, more than 100 utility crews working to restore power to homes in Austin expected steady progress throughout the day.

This week’s ice storm resulted in hundreds of thousands of outages in Texas due to falling trees or ice accumulating on power lines, not due to grid problems as during a major 2021 storm. At one point, more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Texas were without power, though by 6:30 a.m. Friday, that had fallen to just over 240,000, according to data from poweroutage.us.

About half of these outages were for Austin city utility customers. Officials in the tech capital of Texas said Thursday they could not give a clear timeline for when all local outages could be fixed, despite initially promising a full recovery by Friday evening. But city officials have confirmed the delays are not for lack of trying. On Friday morning, just over 22% of Austin Energy customers were still without power.

“As additional outages occur as we restore power, it may seem like there is no progress,” Austin Energy general manager Jackie Sargent said at a press conference on Thursday morning. “It’s like two steps forward and three steps back.”

At a follow-up Thursday afternoon press event, she added that Austin Energy’s utilities, including those that traveled from other regions to help, have had to deal with many difficult outages, including some more difficult than those observed in 2021. At times, Sargent noted, crews could not even access the site due to fallen trees and branches bending under the “probably historic” weight of the accretion.

Elton Richards, Austin Energy’s vice president of field operations, noted at Thursday’s afternoon press conference that the time it takes for crews to fix failures varies. He said that in a situation as simple as a tree branch lying on a power line, repairs might only take about two hours. But a fully grown tree that falls on the poles and breaks them can more than quadruple the time it takes crews to re-establish communications.

He called the damage caused by this year’s winter storm “terrible.”

“I’ve been doing this for over 20+ years and have never seen such destruction, except for tornadoes in the north,” he said.

Due to disruptions and debris, many Central Texas school districts were closed for the rest of the week. Despite rising temperatures, classes in Austin, Round Rock, Eanes, Lake Travis, Leander and Elgin were canceled on Friday.

The forecast calls for drier, warmer conditions in the Austin area, with highs expected in the 60s in some areas on Friday, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures could dip below freezing again during the night until Saturday, but lows are forecast to slowly rise to 50 degrees over the next couple of days by Tuesday.

Richards said the ice is melting on the trees with warmer weather like this, and Austin Energy can finally gain momentum in tackling the problem, even if it can’t stick to its original Friday 6 p.m. schedule.

“I think in the next 24 hours you will see a sharp decline in the number of customers,” he said Thursday afternoon.

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