Overnight Storms Across Texas Leave Thousands of Customers Across Texas Without Power

Overnight storms across Texas left thousands of customers across Texas without power Wednesday morning.

Severe thunderstorms moved through Central Texas Tuesday night, with intense winds, heavy rain, and quarter-sized hail causing downed trees and small flooding across the region.

Oncor currently has over 6,000 affected customers due to power outages from last night's storms. Oncor serves over four million customers in West Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth, Waco and parts of East Texas.

Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC) currently has only 14 active outages. PEC serves 24 counties across Central Texas and the Texas Hill Country.

Austin Energy currently has 26 active outages, affecting 346 customers in the city.

In past years, severe weather in Texas meant power outages could last for days. Winter Storm Uri in 2021 left hundreds of thousands of North Texas residents, specifically in the Dallas area, without power for days.

After Uri, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bills 2 and 3 in 2021 to reform the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), aiming to improve the energy grid's responses to severe weather.

"We promised not to leave session until we fixed these problems, and I am proud to say that we kept that promise," Governor Abbott said in a press release. "These laws will improve the reliability of the electric grid and help ensure these problems never happen again.

This winter, Texas's grid weathered the storm during hard ice and heavy snow. The grid has become more reliable in comparison to past years, improving public trust in ERCOT.

More severe weather is expected later this week and into the weekend across the state, again testing the state's power systems.