Most customers are prone to spinning failures due to persistent winter conditions

SAINT ANTHONY – About two-thirds of CPS Energy grids will continue to experience spinning outages for the next 24 to 48 hours due to unprecedented demand in freezing conditions that are expected to persist over the next few days, officials said Monday.

CPS Energy updated the media on Monday afternoon, hours after the Texas Electric Reliability Council said spinning outages would continue statewide until Tuesday.

Paula Gold-Williams, president and CEO of CPS Energy, said the goal was to try and alternate outages in 15-minute increments. But with high demand, combined with a reduced ability to generate electricity due to the frost, she acknowledged that the results were not consistent.

Some customers have reported longer outages with power only returning for a few minutes at a time.

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“We’re taking all the information we can and trying to resolve the issues,” Gold-Williams said.

The bulk of the outages San Antonio residents experience are due to rotations. Some customers may be cut for longer due to other factors like equipment failure, Gold-Williams said. About a third of the network will continue to be supplied because some circuits supply essential services, such as a hospital or a police department.

Typically, CPS Energy sees peak energy demand in the summer when the hottest temperatures set in. But that ice storm exceeded demand seen in the summer, Gold-Williams said.

Gold-Williams said teams were working around the clock to resolve issues, but said this scenario was a “very complex process.”

Without the power outages, entire grids would be taken offline, leaving them without power indefinitely, Gold-Williams said.

Managers ask customers to continue to save power when supplied with power in order to stabilize the system faster.

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