SAN ANTONIO — Hundreds of thousands of CPS Energy Customers are being bombarded with a voicemail that says: “Hello, this is CPS Energy calling. Our systems indicate there is an outage.”
The extreme wintry weather has prompted a series of rotational and weather-induced outages across San Antonio and surrounding communities.
Lydia Kelly is among those impacted customers who says she's tired of no concrete answers regarding when she’ll get her power back for good without interruptions.
“It’s very, very frustrating,” Kelly said.
She calls the power outages unpredictable as she strategizes when to cook meals.
“We have three minutes to six minutes every hour to hour and a half,” Kelly said.
The rotational outages have been causing headaches for Kelly, who’s been unlucky in her attempts to get hold of anyone from CPS Energy or the City of San Antonio.
“My daughter, who lives in Minnesota, called me and she goes, 'Oh my gosh, Mom, your social media post—you’re pretty upset,' and I said, 'I am, I just want to talk to someone,'" Kelly said.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has instructed energy companies across Texas to execute rolling outages in an effort to save energy.
CPS Energy noted the goal is for customers to be without power for 15-minute intervals or less before outages are rotated to another area. But the company admits customers have been powerless for much longer.
KENS 5 has been inundated with emails and calls from south-central Texas residents venting about the absence of electricity—in some cases for several hours at a time.
Among them are families children and elderly individuals enduring the frigid temperatures.
CPS Energy officials said longer outages can be linked to damaged infrastructure, and not necessarily because of the rolling blackouts.
“The biggest thing that we can say is that we are absolutely sorry that this is occurring,” said Paula Gold-Williams, president and CEO of CPS Energy.
Gold-Williams stressed energy consumption has climbed to levels similar to what’s experienced during San Antonio’s hottest months.
“The requests that have had to come to restabilize the system are, again, two, three, four times more than we’ve seen in peak periods in the summer,” she said. “We are working as hard as we can to restabilize the system for everyone. But we are still challenged because of these below freezing temperatures that are really continuing.”
CPS Energy officials expect the rotating outages to continue at least through the next 24 hours.
To view the CPS Energy power outage map, click here.