Freezing rain, snow, and sleet arrived in the Entergy Texas service territory the evening of Feb. 14 and into the next morning. Due to record-cold temperatures, load forecasts approached an all-time peak, exceeding the polar vortex of January 2019.
As a result, Entergy Texas asked its customers to voluntarily reduce their electricity usage, especially between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. as the demand could exceed the available generation. The company’s reliability coordinator, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), made this request to Entergy and other utilities in the area.
In particular, the western region of Entergy Texas service territory experienced a power shortage. Issues from the freeze also impacted generation units and transmission lines.
"We continue our work to return power plants online but are facing difficulties due to the extreme cold," Entergy stated on its Web site. "We have begun rotating outages to limit how long customers are affected by these outages."
In Texas, Entergy rotated outages to restore those customers who had been affected the longest. It planned to continue the process until the service was restored or MISO canceled its request for curtailment.
Meanwhile, in Arkansas, extreme cold winter weather continued throughout the week of Feb. 15 with snow and freezing rain expected throughout the state on Feb. 17 and 19. Temperatures were expected to remain well below freezing until Feb. 20.
"These extreme cold conditions and precipitation can create problems for an electric system and make for hazardous driving conditions, slowing restoration," Entergy Arkansas stated in a Feb. 17 update. "As of 8:00 a.m., there are approximately 312 customers without power, which is unrelated to the mandatory rolling outages that began late yesterday evening."
About 1,400 resources were engaged in restoration efforts in Arkansas, and Entergy says that number could increase as it worked to bring in additional mutual assistance resources from outside the state.
"We are responding to outages quickly and as safely as possible when they occur," the company stated. "Our team will continue to practice social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this may slow restoration work."
Mandatory rolling outages began Feb. 16 at 7:03 p.m. and ended just before 8:55 p.m. About 60,000 customers across Arkansas experienced temporary outages ranging between 11 to 45 minutes. The company did these rolling outages to try to balance the supply with the demand and prevent a more extensive, prolonged power outage that could severely impact the reliability of the grid. All the Entergy operating companies, including other members of MISO, participated in these rolling outages.
This photo gallery shows the extent of damage to Entergy's service territory from the winter storm and its crews out in full force to restore power and repair infrastructure in record low temperatures.