LIVE:
City of Austin leadership including @AustinEnergyGM will address the unprecedented severe weather.
Due to tech limitations, it will only be available via Facebook Live here: http://facebook.com/austintexasgov
We will be live-tweeting in this thread.
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What percentage of Austin Energy outages are caused by ERCOT? Sargent: We have some situations where we've had some outages and we're including that in our load shed requirements. Right now, that is all wrapped together to meet those requirements from ERCOT.
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cont: We are working on infrastructure. I can't break out a percentage of any specific load to a non-event outage at this time. We are aware of where our system is at - and we're operating within the constraints of ERCOT. ERCOT says this situation is likely to continue through
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the night and possibly in the afternoon and tomorrow morning. It depends on what we do as consumers, managing our consumption. The more we can conserve, the more we can help our neighbors. Also, making sure our resources are operating properly. We have people here 24/7.
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Question: Regarding 311 system down Sargent: We are working with our Utility Contact Center to back up
@ATX_311. We are working in conjunction with our City IT and they're working very diligently to restore those services.Show this thread -
Are customers heeding request to reduce energy? Sargent: We are making those requests. We have reached out to specific groups of customers and they are responding by conserving. The thing I talked about that individuals can do - lowering thermostat, closing blinds, will help us.
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Is South Austin bearing the brunt of the outages? Sargent: That is not the case. The outages are across the system. They are designated by specific circuits and those are circuits - if you look at the outage map, they're across our service territory.
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Sargent: Those are part of the circuits that we were instructed to turn off as part of the response to this event. As we added to all of those circuits, we got to a point where we hit all of them. So we couldn't drop any additional load to go and rotate through.
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Sargent: Basically, we are stuck here until we can get a reprieve from ERCOT. It's a tough situation. I understand that. We are doing everything we can to get to a place where we can get people's power back on.
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Concerns about more winter weather? Sargent: If we see that continue across the entire footprint, across our state, that we'll continually to have challenges to meet the demand. Asking customers to conserve will continue to be critical.
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Frozen precip on trees creates outages. Some of the areas are challenging to get to. There are canyons, vegetation. Continue to monitor & watch these conditions. Do what you can to be prepared. Have what resources you have available. We can't say for sure this won't continue.
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Ortiz: We currently have 4 cold weather shelters that are open. Plus a warming center (Palmer Events Center) that is also functioning as a shelter. We're distributing individuals throughout those shelters.
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Brown: We may be asking people to take showers tonight, so not everyone showers tomorrow morning to reduce natural gas usage.
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Adler: Consider donating a blanket to Front Steps. If you're in need of food, dial 211. We're all in this together and we're going to take it one moment at a time. Be safe.
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Cronk: As we know this is impacting every corner of our state, but it's also impacting the corners of our neighborhood and homes. Thank you to everyone. **END OF THREAD**
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End of conversation
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