Following termination of the rolling controlled outages ordered by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), AEP Texas resumed normal outage restoration activities throughout its service territory early this afternoon.

ERCOT issued the order to begin rolling outages around 5:30 a.m., stating in its own news release “to compensate for a generation shortages and numerous plant trips that occurred due to the extreme weather.” ERCOT gradually reduced the level of the controlled outages throughout the morning and completely withdrew the directive for all rolling outages around 1 p.m.

During the height of the rolling outages, as many as 90,000 customers were affected by the ERCOT-ordered outages. AEP Texas estimates that a total of approximately 600,000 customers were impacted by the outages. When ERCOT issued the directive to begin the rolling outages this morning, only approximately 1,000 customers throughout the entire AEP Texas service territory in south and west Texas were experiencing outages.

Rotating outages are controlled, temporary interruptions of electric service, which today lasted an average of 30 to 60 minutes per area.

The AEP Texas electric system was approaching an all-time electric consumption peak when the emergency was declared.

“Customers need to continue practice energy conservation measures as this winter storm continues,” said David Hooper, AEP Texas vice president of Distribution Services. “We will continue to monitor the situation as the winter storm continues over the next 24 hours.”

He added that customers requiring an uninterrupted power supply should make contingency plans.