Power restored to thousands after substation goes offline due to high temps
AUSTIN, Texas - Thousands of Austin Energy customers now have power after losing it Wednesday night.
Wednesday was one of the hottest days of the year so far. On Thursday, Austin ISD struggled with air conditioning issues as the temperatures outside hit dangerous highs.
"It's kind of a double whammy. You have the environmental impact and then you also have the electrical and that energy impact, too," Austin Energy spokesperson Matt Mitchell said.
The high temperatures and high energy use caused an Austin Energy substation on the East side of I-35 to go offline just before 5 p.m. Wednesday evening.
"That transformer was pulling so much current through it because of the high use, high energy use, of that particular substation that the protective sensors and the protective equipment basically tripped it offline," Mitchell said.
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More than 7,000 customers were without power.
"We had work going on at that substation to investigate, and we had our energy control center working to reroute power through other circuits to restore as many customers as we could," Mitchell said.
Eventually, the substation was deemed safe to kick back online and power was restored by 9 p.m. Wednesday night. Mitchell said if that protective system hadn’t worked, the fix could have taken weeks.
"If you fry your circuits, those don't just come back on," Mitchell said.
Mitchell said that the substation system has been adjusted since the outage.
"We've gone in and reset those thresholds in those centers to accommodate higher energy load being pulled through there, so we don't anticipate this being an issue again, certainly not in that location," Mitchell said.
When things seemed to cool down Wednesday night, Austin ISD reported their own issues.
The district said at around 11:30 p.m. On Wednesday night, power went out at the central office and the backup generator failed. Badging services and employee onboarding were impacted and will be rescheduled, enrollment assistance was done on air-conditioned buses outside and on campuses, and calls to the central services were not able to go through.
The district said they are working on a permanent fix for the whole building.
Covington Middle School in South Austin is currently running a rental air conditioning unit. The principal sent a letter to parents on Thursday morning and said a broken part in their HVAC system was causing air conditioning issues.
The district said maintenance and operations teams are scheduled to complete a permanent fix over the weekend.
Austin Energy said conserving energy is helpful and suggested monitoring AC usage and putting off using major appliances until after the sun goes down.