Texas winter weather: Austin Energy prepared for upcoming arctic blast

AUSTIN, Texas – As winter weather draws closer, Austin Energy said they’re more prepared than ever to keep the lights on for more than 550,000 customers across Central Texas.

What they’re saying:

“Austin Energy has been preparing for winter weather events like this for months,” says Austin Energy public information officer, Matt Mitchell.

Since December, crews have been weatherizing power plants and substations, as well as insulating sensitive equipment and stockpiling resources for any sort of failure.

“Our equipment, our people, our trucks are meant to work in the cold. There’s not a concern about cold necessarily impacting our infrastructure or our distribution equipment,” says Mitchell.

The most pressing threat is the possibility of ice, which can cause power lines to sag and break due to excessive weight. That weight can also cause tree limbs to snap and cause additional damage to power infrastructure.

“If you have freezing rain, it accumulates on the electrical wire. It accumulates on those tree limbs above the electrical wire, and you see what we had here in 2023,” he said.

Mitchell was referring to the winter storm in 2023, which left 30% of Austin Energy customers without power after 10.5 million trees were damaged. An estimated 170,000 tons of debris was left behind, with the cleanup compared to that of a level one hurricane.

“We’ve certainly taken those lessons in terms of vegetation management,” he said.

Since 2023, Austin Energy says it’s placed a special priority on trimming the limbs of trees in its service area as well as improving the strength of power lines and infrastructure to hold up in winter conditions.

“It’s been a concerted effort by the utility and the city of Austin, certainly since 2023 and even beyond,” says Mitchell.

For months, crews have also been undergoing training for winter weather, including specialized drills as well as tabletop exercises with neighboring utilities and other city departments. 

Freezing weather preps in Central Texas

A cold front arriving on Friday will bring arctic air and below-freezing temperatures to Central Texas, with overnight lows potentially dropping into the teens Saturday.

This weekend, hundreds of Austin Energy personnel are expected to be ready to jump in at a moment’s notice.

“Every crew that we have is either going to be deployed or on standby to deploy,” says Mitchell.

With a lineup of new upgrades and additional training, Austin Energy doesn’t expect there to be any extended outages throughout the weekend.

“This is the most prepared we’ve been and the most resilient that our grid has been. I mean we’re always upgrading our infrastructure, our equipment, our lines, our poles, our people. We’ve done training for this, we’ve done drills for this. We’re ready for whatever Mother Nature has to throw at us,” he said.

What you can do:

Austin Energy is still urging the public to have a plan in place in case of extended outages, including charging all devices and having extra batteries in place.

If you are an Austin Energy customer, outage updates, restore times, and other information can be found by visiting their website. They will also be providing updates through their social media pages.