July 18, 2009
Austin Energy Update

A substation that serves an area of Northwest Austin tripped off line at about 4:06 Saturday, July 18. The outage affected about 17,000 customers. The boundaries of the outage: North- Anderson Mill Road, West- McNeil Road, South- Mopac, East – 183. The substation has 11 circuits or major power lines feeding neighborhoods throughout the affected area.

The outage was caused by failure of a small piece of equipment which caught on fire. The Austin Fire Department was ca

Power began to be restored to neighborhoods about 5:15 p.m. and was restored to all customers by about 7:00 p.m.

When outages occur - customers without power should call 322-9100. In situations when the system receives a large number of calls, which occurred Saturday, the system switches to an automated mode. This allows thousands of calls to be handled simultaneously. On cue, a customer should input either the telephone number attached to the customer’s electric account or their Powerlink Number, which is located in the right hand corner of their City of Austin utility bill.