Power outages impact thousands
At its peak, SWEPCO reported about 85,000 of its customers, mostly in East Texas, were without service
(KSLA) — Power outages Sunday impacted thousands of customers in Northwest Louisiana and East Texas.
Now SWEPCO says it expects to have all the power restored tonight.
“We’re methodically energizing our substations to ensure we can restore power to all customers tonight,” Gary Guin, the utility’s risk and reliability director, says in a statement released just before 10 p.m. “The SWEPCO team appreciates our customers’ patience.”
Customers who have turned off their air conditioners and appliances may turn them on again because voltage problems experienced earlier Sunday have been resolved, SWEPCO reports.
Meantime, the utility continues to try to determine the cause of Sunday’s outages.
Specialists have patrolled power lines by helicopter. And teams are downloading data from station equipment to get a clearer picture of what happened.
Early on, a recorded message by Panola-Harrison Electric Cooperative said an issue with power supply impacted some of its customers in Keithville and Shreveport in Northwest Louisiana and DeBerry, Bethany, Waskom, Carthage, Karnack and Marshall in East Texas as well as surrounding areas.
At one point, SWEPCO reported that about 85,000 of its customers in East Texas were without service.
“SWEPCO is working to restore power to approximately 85,000 customers in East Texas after experiencing issues on its power grid that have led to voltage problems,” utility spokeswoman Carey Sullivan said Sunday evening. "SWEPCO’s power grid operated as it was designed and protected the integrity of the power lines. "
Those still without service number 55,650, with 55,589 of those in East Texas.
SWEPCO’s outage map shows those still impacted include:
- Bowie 7
- Camp Fewer than 5
- Cass Fewer than 5
- Gregg 31,432
- Hall Fewer than 5
- Harrison 3,295
- Panola 5,209
- Rusk 6,440
- Shelby 516
- Smith 411
- Upshur 4,663
- Van Zandt 241
- Wood 3,369
Rusk County, Texas, OEM reported that “Henderson, Kilgore, and Rusk County SWEPCO and RC Electric customers are experiencing power outages. The cause is due to an incident at a substation near the Texas Eastman facility in Longview. That is all we know at this time and there is no ETA on restoration.”
Copyright 2019 KSLA. All rights reserved.
