Prompted by the National Weather Service Red Flag Warning for Travis County, Texas, on Sunday and increased wildfire risk to the area, Texas public power utility Austin Energy is using extra safety precautions to protect the community by activating its enhanced powerline safety settings.
Austin Energy is not turning off customers’ power, only adjusting system settings to increase safety.
“Our priority is always to keep the community safe,” said Austin Energy Deputy General Manager and Chief Operating Officer Lisa Martin. “By turning on these enhanced safety settings, we are taking temporary and proactive measures to reduce risk during these weather conditions.”
Enhanced powerline safety settings remove the system’s ability to automatically re-energize after an outage. Instead, crews will physically walk and inspect affected circuits first to make sure equipment is safe to turn back on.
Walking the circuit helps crews find potential issues, but this can take additional time, as some circuits are long and run through difficult terrain, the utility said.
Enhanced powerline safety settings were active between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9. During that time, outage restoration may take longer than usual, Austin Energy said.
