BREAKING NEWS: ERCOT Announces Rotating Blackouts

ERCOT sent this press release:

ERCOT – the entity that manages the statewide electric grid – has declared an emergency and has ordered that utilities drop or stop serving 1,000 MW of load statewide.

Austin’s share of that emergency order is 37-40 MW. Austin Energy begun rotating blackouts in Austin about 4:20 pm to comply with our share of the load shedding requirement.

The state’s problem is due to unseasonably hot temperatures plus generating plants in planned outages for maintenance.

The statewide power shortage is expected to continue until about 6:00 pm. But that’s an estimate.

Ask all citizens to reduce electrical use to the extent possible.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@austinist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Aaron Haley in News on April 17, 2006 5:07 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

john

it's kind of hard to use electricity whenever there isn't any coming out of your outlets.

mary

haha, like anyone is actually going to use less electricity because of this.

it's over

KEYE says the load shedding is now over.

michaelfavia

I don't know about the "rolling" part. My power was out the whole time down here in 78704. Maybe they just thought us hippies/hipsters would be too stoned to notice. The outages did start at almost exactly 4:20 didnt they?

In other breaking news myspace.com is inundated by sudden the rush of activity surrounding the restoration of internet service to the greater austin area. Unfortunately the website is still available and, no you dont have any new friend requests.

-mf