HARLINGEN — AEP Texas officials are requesting that customers throttle down their electricity use in the wake of local outages from Laredo to the Rio GrandeValley.
Power company officials say the conservation measures will help maintain the grid system during peak usage windows of 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Customers are asked to take the following measures:
>> Set thermostats to a level two to three degrees cooler than normal so heating/air-conditioning systems are not using as much electricity.
>> Close blinds and curtains to keep heat from escaping a room.
>> Only use large appliances such as dishwashers, washing machines or dryers outside of non-peak usage hours.
>> Turn off lights in unoccupied rooms.
Customers who have lost power should switch off large appliances such as heating and cooling systems, dishwashers, washing machines and dryers. This will reduce the possibility AEP Texas breakers will trip again as power is restored.
AEP Texas officials say the request for conservation measures is prompted by cold load issues associated with restoration of service following a series of distribution outages caused by the current weather conditions.
Tuesday in San Benito, for example, an outage that lasted five hours for about 2,600 customers was prolonged when an AEP Texas circuit breaker tripped and tripped again when power was re-established, said Lee Jones, AEP Texas manager for community affairs and customer services.
“The cold load pickup is what we have when power goes off and you had the dryer on, and you’re baking some cookies and your oven is on,” Jones said. “But after several hours of being off, everybody’s thermostats want to come back at the same time, with all of that load at the same time, and we have a hard time getting that circuit breaker energized again.
“We ask people that if your power goes off on these cold days, go over and turn your thermostats off,” Jones added.
As of early evening Tuesday, around 2,500 AEP Texas customers were without power. Outages could be found from Laredo to StarrCounty to Brownsville.
Outage numbers are expected to go up and down and skip from city to city as the cold weather continues this week.
AEP Texas anticipates the cold days will continue to impact equipment within the electric grid, resulting in blown fuses, tripped breakers and other equipment failures, the company said.
“Everybody remembers when we’ve gone to rolling blackouts, which we don’t do often, and that’s almost always a transmission or generation issue,” Jones said. “But we’re not experiencing those right now.
“We get one thing fixed and something else overloads, and it’s probably going to be like that for the next day or two,” he added.
The forecast is for below-freezing lows today and Thursday in the high 20s and low 30s with highs in the high 50s to low 60s.
On Friday, the weather pattern begins to break, with lows between the high 30s to mid-40s, and highs in the mid-60s.
This weekend calls for highs in the 70s with lows in the high 50s and high 50s through Sunday.