Austin Energy readies for potential power outages, applying lessons from past storms to enhance response and communication.
AUSTIN, Texas — With severe weather rolling in, a lot of Central Texans are concerned about the potential for power outages.
Crews with Austin Energy are preparing to work ahead of the threat. Matt Mitchell with Austin Energy spoke to KVUE’s Marc Mullins on how the utility company is preparing.
Mullins: “Tell us a little bit about what your utility is doing right now to prepare for this incoming weather.”
Mitchell: “Well, paying close attention to the weather forecasts and as we get more and more confident as to what that weather precipitation, winter weather precipitation is going to be. We will make adjustments and know what more to expect. But most of it right now is making sure double checking everything that we’ve already done. Making sure that we have critical supplies in stock, making sure that our staffing models are completely up-to-date and we have all those crews on standby, planning for an extended weekend and extended subzero-subfreezing event.”
Mullins: “Once the system rolls in you’ll have a better idea of what the staffing will look like for Austin Energy.”
Mitchell: “It’s all hands on deck, as it should be. I mean we’ve become accustomed this time of year, late January early February, that we’re going to see these winter weather events or Mother Nature is going to throw some curveballs at us. So we’re making sure that our crews are on standby when they’re needed. We’re making sure that our critical supplies again are distributed among our service territory. We’ve got over 400 square miles on the Austin Energy service territory. So we’ve got a lot to consider and a lot to cover. But certainly as we get closer to that winter weather event, we see what that accumulation might be that helps us kind of train in, hone in even more so on our response.”
Mullins: “A lot of people remember 2021, 2023 and those winter storms and what happened then, a lot of people were out in the cold without power. So we’re not expecting that level, but what are the lessons that were learned from those two weather systems that Austin Energy has taken and put into practice now.”
Mitchell: “We learned a lot from those winter weather events. Certainly 2021. 2023 [ was a very different event]. 2021, you may recall was a statewide generation event. We didn’t have enough power throughout the state, so ERCOT mandated rolling blackouts and we were affected by that in Austin. Certainly in 2023 the ice storm was primarily focused on our Austin-metro area, wreaked havoc on our urban canopy and our electric distribution system.
So there were two different storms and still when we have those kind of outages, we as a learning organization have to take those lessons. As a city, Austin has learned to communicate better about how we are preparing for and responding to emergencies in the wintertime. The city of Austin is much different in how we communicate with out community about that. Our medically vulnerable registry that Austin Energy maintains is now over 1000 people.
So anyone who has a medically vulnerable situation and depends on life saving equipment, they have a dedicated case manager now to do outreach and make sure that there’s contingency planning involved. And of course we’ve redoubled our efforts when it comes to vegetation management, that’s the big one. Everybody knows about 2023 and why that was such an impactful storm was because of the accumulated ice and precipitation on our power lines and on our tree limbs. So making sure that we’re keeping up with that, making sure that we’re identifying those circuits that are most susceptible to inclement weather, that’s been our focus for well more than two years.”
Mitchell urges people to plan ahead by having extra flashlights and extra batteries on hand if you experience a power outage.