Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

My own power has stayed on continuously since Saturday morning, but a lot of Austin-area residents are not so fortunate.

There are still 24,000 Austinites still without power as of Monday morning, with a projected point of resolution still six days away.

Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for Travis County and six others across the state on Saturday. That opened the door to deploy “all available” state resources necessary to help alleviate the issues. Austin and Travis County officials issued their own disaster declarations last week.

Across the whole state, 32,600 people are without power, down from the near-half a million in the middle of last week. Marked progress has been made, but Austin Energy continues to struggle to restore power for the remnant after an ice storm downed power lines across its service area.

Falling tree branches are the foremost culprit of the circuit disruption, and certain areas experienced repeated outages after successive breaks occurred.

Indeed. In the 2021 ice storm, power outages were due to ERCOT’s over-reliance on renewable energy sources, failure to match supply to demand, and foolishly power-cycling areas (like the Permian Basin) that made things worse by constraining energy supplies, but the 2023 ice storm outages were almost entirely due to power-line being taken out by ice-encrusted branches. (In my neighborhood, pretty much every house had multiple large branches snap off from the ice accumulation, and several people lost entire trees.)

“Based on current information, we expect to restore power to nearly all remaining customers by Sunday, February 12, with the exception of those in need of electrical repairs to customer-owned or maintained equipment,” the City of Austin said in a Monday morning release. In addition to home outages, there were 36 traffic signals out as of Sunday afternoon.

But looking ahead to this week’s forecast, the city cautioned, “The expected weather conditions this week may damage power lines and already weakened trees, causing additional outages, increasing the risk for our lineworkers, and slowing progress.”

Austin Energy, the city-owned utility provider, contracted linemen from surrounding utilities to assist with the repair endeavor.

Officials stated that the ice accumulation was heavier and more pervasive than during the 2021 blackouts, which were caused mainly by a statewide power grid failure and not local downed power lines.

One big contributing factor seems to be that tree removal near power lines hasn’t always been a priority for Austin Energy.

Ice on power lines and nearby branches is to blame for most of Austin Energy’s power outages this week.

Austin Energy’s website shows tree clearance is based on the type of tree.

Fast-growing trees, like pecan, have a 15-foot clearance. The slow-growing species, like cedar, have a 10-foot clearance. Any trees near high-voltage transmission cables must be trimmed 25 feet back.

Austin Energy’s website shows three contracting companies were hired to help clear a backlog of work around the city.

“Vegetation management is something that we’re very focused on. Over the past several years we have increased our budget and our focus to trim trees. We could really use help in that area with getting our residents to understand the importance of vegetation management, to allow our crews in, to get the vegetation management done. We can always be better,” Jackie Sargent, general manager for Austin Energy, said in a press conference Thursday.

Before Austin Energy trims any tree, the company considers the seasons that oak wilt peaks at and if any tree contains bird habitats.

“We make every effort to avoid trimming red oak and live oak trees between February through June when oak wilt is more likely to spread. When possible, we avoid trimming from March to September to protect Golden-cheeked Warbler and Black-capped Vireo habitat areas (applies to undeveloped areas west of MoPac). However, we conduct limited trimming on oak trees during the oak wilt window in areas that are experiencing frequent vegetation-related outages or emergency situations,” Austin Energy’s website shows.

What are mere tax- and energy bill-paying citizens compared to the safety of the Golden-cheeked Warbler and Black-capped Vireo?

Looking at the 2022 Austin Energy Annual Report, the words “trees” and “pruning” do not appear anywhere at all, but “Green” shows up 11 hits. Appearing green seems a much higher priority for Austin Energy and the Austin City Council than trimming the actual greenery necessary to ensure the lights stay on.

Some adjustment seems in order.