AEP Texas crews are now focusing service restoration efforts on individual outages and pockets of outages in very remote areas of west Texas in the aftermath of last weekend’s ice storm.  Since the number of outages peaked at 7,300, crews have restored power to all but approximately 1,000 customers as of 11 a.m. Wednesday morning.

Restoration of service to most of these customers is anticipated by Wednesday evening, if not sooner, although service restoration to some customers could go beyond that projection.

AEP Texas crews have restored operations to all ten substations that lost service as a result of the ice storm.  Repairs were completed on a 69-kV transmission line between Alpine and Marfa Tuesday evening.   Many of the remaining outages are located in extremely rough terrain, making the restoration efforts very treacherous.   Downed transmission and distribution structures, broken cross-arms and damaged power lines are just a few of the issues the crews are facing.

AEP Texas has scheduled a planned outage from 2-4 p.m. today in Ft. Davis and areas around the McDonald Observatory. The outage is necessary to make additional transmission line repairs.  By Wednesday morning, AEP Texas crews had restored power to the Ft. Davis area; however, the additional work during today’s planned outage will reduce the possibility of future outages.

Additionally, residents of Valentine and the Davis Mountain Resorts also will experience two brief outages at 2 and 4 p.m. as a part of today’s planned outage.

Approximately 475 customers in Alpine and its surrounding area, including the Double Diamond, Sunny Glenn and Calamity Creek subdivisions remained out of service Wednesday morning.   AEP Texas is projecting that service will be restored to many of these residents by Wednesday evening.

Approximately 400 customers remained without electric service in the McCamey area on Wednesday morning.  AEP Texas anticipates restoration of service to many of these customers by Wednesday evening.

“We are entering the phase where we are addressing either individual outages or small groups of outages,” said Mark Baker AEP Texas regional manager of distribution systems.   “This is the time in a storm restoration effort where we begin to address new problems that have emerged after the first phase of the restoration has been completed.  That means the number of outages will go up and down as we make repairs and discover additional issues to address.  We will continue our efforts and want to thank area residents for their support and patience as we move towards conclusion of the restoration process.”