Entergy Texas is conducting rotating outages in its services area, this time focusing on Southeast Texas.
The utility was ordered by its grid manager, Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), on Monday to start outages around Montgomery County in its western service area to help avoid a severe overload from demand, but now it’s eastern area has concerned MISO.
Entergy informed customers Tuesday morning that Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties would be impacted by possibly several outages through the day depending on conditions, after MISO warned demand from the area was at an “all-time high.”
“This loss of generation combined with the peak load has caused a strain on the system,” Stuart Barrett, vice president of customer service for Entergy Texas, said in a statement. “As a result, we are short of the power needed to meet our customers’ demands in that area.”
Once some of the generation capacity is restored, the utility has to wait for confirmation to return it into service, which Entergy has said can take time.
Along with its ability to supply power being affected, Entergy said it also has to be systemic and cautious as it brings areas back online.
Due to the bitter cold and customers using additional heaters or other appliances, demand from Conroe and The Woodlands broke demand records Monday for the utility.
With that extra strain on the system, Entergy has said it has to manually target certain areas to restore power and monitor how the demand effects its system to avoid a power spike and damage to the grid.
Allie Payne, a spokesperson with Entergy Texas, said customers can help the process by turning off some appliances or unplugging extra heaters while their power is off.
“You can always turn on one light so you know when power returns and then gradually turn your appliances back on as the system stabilizes,” she told the Enterprise. “That helps us spread out the increase in power usage and lets us restore power more efficiently.”
Outages were scattered across Beaumont by mid-morning on Tuesday, with around 100 outages and almost 7,000 customers still without power focused in far north, central and southeast parts of city.
Mid-County also had around 7,000 customers without power, mostly in Port Neches, southwest Nederland and north Port Arthur.
At least 1,400 customers are without power in Orange County.
This story will be updates as more information becomes available.
jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com
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