Amid a historic winter storm, some residents in Montgomery County found themselves without power Monday morning due to generator failure caused by icing at Entergy power plants. Generators at the new Montgomery County plant and Lewis Creek plant had to be shut down due to ice.
According to Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough, who received a briefing from Entergy, the power company is working to thaw the generators and get them back to operating as soon as possible.
“Entergy’s western territory which encompasses anything west of the Trinity River has suffered a major generation failure, said Keough. “The new Montgomery County plant has been shut off due to icing. Currently the plant is back in start up mode and is generating some power but not fully restored. They hope to have this plan back to 100% by 9:30 this morning.”
Keough added that the generators at the Lewis Creek reservoir also failed due to icing, and were being thawed.
So far, the power outages in areas served by Entergy are due to power plant failures, not power line distribution issues, noted Keough.
“We apologize for the inconvenience these outages may cause, but we have an unusual situation right now driven by extreme weather conditions. We are working to respond and restore power as soon as it is safely possible,” said Stuart Barrett, Entergy’s vice president of customer service. “While our crews worked to prepare for this storm, a loss of generation combined with the peak load has caused a strain on the system. As a result, we are short of the power needed to meet our customers’ demands across southeast Texas.”
Keough urged residents to save electricity as much as possible so as not to overload the power grid, “Entergy asked us to get out the word that when power is restored please conserve as much energy as possible for the first few hours to allow the grid to stabilize.”
The Forty-Five News will continue monitoring and provide updates on the power situation in Montgomery County. If you have any useful information please contact the publisher at reaganreednews@gmail.com.
Texas Citizen Journal 