More than 5,600 Austin Energy customers were without power Thursday night, the second day in a row that thousands of people were without electricity amid record-high temperatures.
By 10 p.m., outages had been reduced to about 2,300, according to Austin Energy’s outage map. Power is expected to be restored by 10:50 p.m.
The outages primarily affected customers in an area of southwest Austin near Southwest Parkway and Barton Creek Boulevard.
The cause of the outage has been under investigation since 10 p.m., Austin Energy spokesman Matt Mitchell told the American-Statesman. The utility said the outages — like Wednesday’s outages that affected more than 7,000 customers — were “local” and had nothing to do with the statewide power grid. The grid is operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
Mitchell confirmed on Wednesday that the outages that day were caused by high energy consumption, which caused substation equipment to go offline.
According to the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio, temperatures in Austin reached 41 degrees on Thursday, setting a record for that date at Austin’s Camp Mabry. On Wednesday, temperatures reached 42 degrees, the weather service said.
