Why is my power out?
Circumstances causing service interruptions
An issue with any of these circumstances in the electricity chain may cause a service interruption to your home or business.
Electricity providers are committed to providing reliable electricity and each provider has crews working around the clock, 365 days a year to serve their customers; however, service interruptions do occur, even on sunny days.
During an outage, Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC) is committed to restoring your power as quickly and safely as possible. An issue with any of these circumstances in the electricity chain may cause a service interruption to your home or business.
Distribution Outages
- All power going to PEC members flows through the PEC distribution system. PEC owns, builds, operates, and maintains all of the distribution system to serve the PEC membership. Outages may occur due to a variety of reasons. As long as conditions are safe for our crews PEC will resolve these issues expeditiously.
Member Location
- Service may be interrupted at your house due to a circuit breaker tripping. Circuit breakers are designed to protect your home from power surges and electrical shorts. For more information please read more here.
Transmission Outages
- All large-scale generation goes through the transmission system. The large electric lines that move generation to the PEC distribution system may cause an outage at your location. Outages on these lines may take an extended period to resolve and are almost entirely out of PEC’s control.
Generation Shortages
- When there is very high demand on the statewide electric grid, the supply of generation may not be enough to handle the load. In these situations, PEC — along with other utilities across Texas — may be directed to conduct controlled service interruptions.
- Service interruption start times can be unpredictable, and so can the number of members PEC is directed to interrupt. That gives PEC very little time to give advance notification to its members.
- The service interruptions must continue as long as the regional electric grid operator, ERCOT, is experiencing issues in trying to balance electric generation and peak demand.