2/17/21 A.M.
Over the last few days, our members and many others across Texas have experienced power outages as ERCOT continues to mandate outages from utilities across the state. We understand your frustrations and concerns to have power restored. A third of our system continues to be without power and ERCOT forced outages are responsible for about 95% of the members without power.
Crews continue work to get weather related outages back on. Overnight weather conditions impacted restoration times due to icy roads.
WHAT TO EXPECT TODAY
The ERCOT model continues to show they will not have enough electricity to meet the state’s needs. This will mean continued forced outages for Medina EC members and other Texans across ERCOT’s region today.
For forced outages, you can expect to be without power for up to 8 hours, then power will come back on for 30 minutes-2 hours and then will go off again. These times are predictions and will vary each time.
We are trying to reduce the length of these outages while continuing to balance the required reductions as directed by ERCOT, but it is a challenging task because of the size of our service area.
HOW MUCH LONGER FOR FORCED OUTAGES
We know forced outages will continue through today. With much of the state still under extreme winter weather, the demand for power is expected to be high through the end of week. Weather models show another winter storm moving through Texas today and Thursday which will continue to impact the state’s energy needs.
GOING FORWARD
We will continue to monitor the ERCOT grid conditions. It is constantly changing as the temperature rises and falls again. As generation throughout the state comes back online and ERCOT releases more load to utilities, things will get better. We can’t say at this time when that will happen. We still expect these forced outages to last at least through Wednesday afternoon and possibly Thursday morning, based on the information we currently have.
OUTAGE REPORTING
Outages can be reported by calling 1-866-632-3532 or using the SmartHub app or at MedinaEC.org. If you report an outage and learn you are part of a forced outage, please wait until you have been without power for 8 hours to re-report. We know that this is a frustrating situation but waiting to call back will free up phone lines for other members. The forced outages are completely outside of our control.
Please continue to:
- Get official information, continue to check our website. To see the latest outage numbers and track progress, visit our outage map.
- Report your outages on SmartHub (on our website or through the app) if you can. This is your best option.
- To speak to a customer service agent, call 1-866-632-3532 or use the chat function on our website, which is available from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
*Please note* At any given time, we have more than 10,000 members without power and our system is overwhelmed with calls, online traffic to our website and SmartHub app. You may experience delays, dropped calls or errors in SmartHub.
How You Can Help
We need your help. If you are without power, please turn off any appliances and heating systems that were on when your outage began. When we flip the switch to bring you back online, we need the load to be as low as possible. If heaters are in the on position when the power comes back up, we run the risk of overload which can lead to additional outage times.
Why Are Some People Not Losing Power
Certain feeders cannot be turned off because they serve critical loads like hospitals, natural gas plants, etc. Others are left on because they’re on an emergency list that will automatically drop if the grid gets into even more critical trouble than we are seeing right now. If that happens, those loads will immediately drop to protect grid integrity.
