Power back on for residents in Bandera, Gillespie counties after outages during freezing weather

Bandera Electric Cooperative says rolling outages were due to demand and equipment failure

SAN ANTONIO – Power has been restored to thousands of residents in Bandera and Gillespie counties who experienced power outages on Friday morning amid freezing temperatures.

“We had an equipment failure at the Medina Lake substation,” Bandera Electric Cooperative Chief Administrative Officer John Padalino said. “That piece of equipment served over 1,400 homes. When that equipment failed, we tried to shift those homes to a different substation at the time.”

In a statement on Friday afternoon, the Bandera Electric Cooperative said the utility is experiencing “unprecedented” demand and equipment failures due to the freeze.

Earlier Friday, the utility announced that it was implementing rolling outages in Bandera, Pipe Creek and Wharton’s Dock. BEC said they will attempt to keep outages limited to 30 minutes.

“(The demand) made it very problematic to shift those number of homes to a different substation,” Padalino said. “When we tried to shift that load, other equipment along the line, kind of upstream from there, started tripping out because it became overloaded. It took us through the morning to reset all that equipment.”

As of 1 p.m., fewer than 500 people in Bandera and Medina Counties were without power. Dozens of BEC customers in Kendall and Kerr were also without power.

The full statement reads:

Click here to see an outage map from BEC.

The Central Texas Electric Cooperative in Fredericksburg said residents there also experienced power outages, but crews have located the problem and are working on repairs.

Power for most of the major outages was restored by 10:30 a.m.

Click here to see an outage map from CTEC.

CPS Energy in San Antonio has not reported major outages.

See the CPS Energy outage map here.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has said there are enough resources to meet the demand, but local utility companies may experience some issues.

People who are experiencing a power outage should contact their local power provider, ERCOT says.

Click here to see the outage map of Texas.

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About the Authors:

Rebecca Salinas is an award-winning digital journalist who joined KSAT in 2019. She reports on a variety of topics for KSAT 12 News.

Sean Talbot is the Assistant News Director at KSAT. He formerly served as the Assignments Manager. He joined KSAT in 2001. He graduated from Texas State with a degree in Mass Communication with a minor in Political Science. When he’s not getting our news crews out the door, he’s at home with his wife Lomisa and their two daughters Grace and Sydney.