The recent cold front was a cause for concern for BEC members, but the number of outages remained low and brief. Roughly 10 outages were reported, affecting 676 members.
The first outage was reported in Medina city Thursday, February 3 at 6:30 a.m., and by the afternoon all outages were restored. BEC CEO Bill Hetherington said most of the outages were caused by high winds, not the cold.
“After last year’s winter storm, we focused on making the grid more resilient,” said Hetherington. “Those efforts paid off, and I’m very proud of our employees who worked during the inclement weather to keep the lights and heat on.”
BEC System Operations Supervisor David Ross said he’s also proud of the work that went into making sure the power didn’t go out.
“All BEC employees from the linemen out in the field, to communications and member relations remained ready to serve in case problems arose,” said Ross.
BEC management declared an Emergency Level 1 (E1) event on Wednesday, February 2 at 11 a.m. An E1 is the lowest emergency event, but still calls for extra resources and employees to remain on standby. On Friday, February 4, BEC experienced a 256.38-megawatt-hour peak, making it the second largest in BEC history. The E1 was cancelled at noon on Saturday, February 5.
To learn more about BEC’s focused approach to reliability, outage, and safety information, please visit BanderaElectric.com/Reliability.
Posted Monday, February 7, 2022