HARLINGEN — Days after widespread outages knocked out power to much of the Rio Grande Valley, AEP Texas was expecting to restore electricity to all homes that remained blacked out.
Early this week, as many as 150,000 of the company’s 337,000 customers in the Valley lost power amid a historic freeze that deeply strained the state’s electric grid.
On Friday, the company was expecting to restore power to hundreds of homes in Cameron and Willacy counties by today.
“We have restored 95 percent of our customers and our crews continue to work around the clock to restore power,” spokesman Eladio Jaimez said Friday.
By Friday night, linemen were expected to restore power to about 1,800 remaining homes in Harlingen, 200 homes in Brownsville and 600 homes in Port Isabel, Jaimez said.
Today, crews were expected to restore power to about 400 remaining homes in San Benito and about 100 homes in Willacy County, he said.
For days, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, was ordering AEP and the state’s electric companies to remove power from the state’s electric grid to avoid overloads that could damage the system made up of power lines.
Then on Thursday, ERCOT began allowing AEP to generate more electricity to restore power to homes that remained blacked out.
