As of 9:30 a.m. this morning, approximately 20,635 customers throughout AEP Texas’ 97,000-square-mile service area in south and west Texas are without power due to the cold front that swept through the area Thursday night.
“Damage to our electrical system appears to be minimal and this will help us restore power more quickly throughout the day,” said Bruce Evans, AEP Texas vice president of electric distribution. “We realize customers are greatly inconvenienced by these outages but we are working as quickly as possible to restore power.”
Evans said additional crews have been brought into the Victoria area to help with power restoration. In other areas, there are sufficient crews and contract crews in place to handle the situation.
Some of the areas this morning with the largest outages numbers include:
• Weslaco - Service to some 5,000 customers has been restored and 3,418 customers remain out due to a transmission outage. Service restoration to 2,500 customers on the east side of Weslaco, including Knapp Surgical Center and South Texas ISD is anticipated later this morning, if not sooner, as a result of circuit rerouting. AEP Texas continues to identify other circuits that can be used to restore power to other customers without power due to the transmission outage at the Westmer Substation. In the meantime, crews work to correct the Westmer Substation transmission outage and expect those activities to be completed by late this afternoon, if not sooner.
• Port Isabel – 5,085 customers out. No estimated time of restoration.
• In Bishop - 1,472 customers. Restoration time is estimated to be 1 p.m.
• In Beevile, 1,833 customers are without power and crews are patrolling the lines to determine the cause. No restoration time is currently available.
• North Padre Island – 2,659. Of that total 719 have been restored and crews are working to get the remaining customers back in service.
As temperature climb throughout the day, AEP Texas expects to make considerable progress in restoring power. Its focus will remain on the Valley where electric demand will be high.