Joined now by Matt Mitchell
with Austin Energy.
Matt, we know you have crews
working really hard today,
so thanks for spending a few
minutes with us here on cave you.
Good evening, Brian and Ashley.
Good to be with you.
Yeah, you know, Matt,
the outages we're seeing today
don't come as a complete surprise.
In fact, just yesterday,
Governor Greg Abbott warned
this could happen if ice
accumulated on the power lines.
Our own chief meteorologist,
Hunter Williams, gave us that same warning.
Your teams aren't really able, though,
to pretreat power lines in the same
way that textile crews pretreat roads.
But is there anything that you
all have been able to do?
Well, absolutely. I mean this was a,
this was a situation that we have
prepared for and trained for not just in
the last couple of days but you know in
the previous couple of months as well.
It's it's a it's something that we're
we're trained to deal with and at the
same time you never know exactly what
that situation is going to be until
Mother Nature presents it to you.
And and the amount of icing and
ice accumulation that we've seen on
vegetation around our power lines
and on our power lines as well have
continued to be substantial problems.
The outage work has been ongoing.
For hours and hours now and as
restoration occurs,
sometimes another issue will arise.
For instance,
if a tree is cleared from the line,
the circuit is then re energized,
but then perhaps down the line,
another tree causes a lockout
of that circuit.
So these restorations are ongoing
and the work is continuing to occur,
but we see these things continuing to pop up.
It's a little like whack a mole as we
continue to deal with these falling limbs.
All right, Matt, here's the $1,000,000
question everybody without power wants
to ask you and your teams there any?
News you can share on timing when the
power might be restored for Austinites.
Well, as was mentioned a little while ago,
there are more favorable meteorological
circumstances coming our way.
So that is a positive.
Austin Energy is always about
restoring the largest outages
first impacting the most customers,
so and then the oldest to the newest.
So if people have reported outages,
we know about them,
they do not necessarily need
to hear back from us.
We've got them.
But in some cases they won't see
us in their immediate area because
that outage is down in another.
Area that may may be farther
away from their house but this
is this restoration effort will
be going on for for quite some
time into the overnight and and
Daybreak hours tomorrow.
So we want to prepare our our
community for that eventuality
because there's still quite a
few customers that are waiting
for their power to be restored
you know thinking about that Matt
what about water treatment facility
plans are is the power to those I
think people after 2021 they they
put power and water together is
power you know on and working.
At our water treatment facility plant.
That's a great point and and
water treatment facility,
water treatment plants and and
are are often water in general are
part of critical infrastructure.
Those are always the first priority.
We want to make sure that our hospitals,
nursing homes, a water treatment plants,
critical infrastructure are the first
high needs areas to be addressed.
Then we triage from there.
But as you can imagine with with roughly
1000 outages having been reported in
roughly the last 12 to 14 hours that's
a lot of triaging but but yes we
have every indication that our power.
Generation,
our water supply is completely safe
and now it's about making sure that our
residences get their energy restored
in a timely fashion as safely as possible.
Alright, Matt, last question.
A couple of years ago we all
went through the ice storm that
caused a lot of trouble similar
to what we're seeing now.
But from what you've told us today,
this is more of a nature kind of
wreaking havoc problem as opposed
to an electric grid problem.
Is that what I understand?
That's absolutely accurate Brian.
You're absolutely right and you know
in Winter Storm Yuri was about a power
generation and transmission and need.
There was a lot of an issue,
a lot of issues there with how we moved
that around our grid and then having
a lot of those facilities go offline.
That is not the case
here. This is a very much a localized
set of circumstances.
It is where Central Texas and
our beautiful foliage and
and tree canopies. Sometimes
can cause real problems
when you have an icing event like this, so
this has nothing to do
with the supply and demand
or even a distribution issue.
This is about line breaks and what
happens when foliage and and ice
accumulation mix and it's not pretty.
And Mitchell from Austin Energy.
Matt, we thank you for taking some time
out to talk with us. Thanks, Matt.