City of Longview street department at work; SWEPCO says electricity supply stable
Published: Tue, 01/16/24
City of Longview street department at work; SWEPCO says electricity supply stable
Marshall Avenue at Sixth Street in Longview is seen Monday morning. Personnel in Longview's street department are out treating hazardous roads with sand and salt where needed, according to the city.
Jordan Green/News-Journal Photo
Longview News-Journal
By Jo Lee Ferguson [email protected]
January 15, 2024
Personnel in Longview's street department are out treating hazardous roads with sand and salt where needed.
City spokesman Richard Yeakley said the police department identifies the areas of town that need attention.
"The street department is running 12-hour schedules for sanding operations and will continue to do so through Wednesday," he said.
Yeakley said there haven't been any issues at this point with water and sewer lines, but the city is keeping watch.
No major issues have been reported with electric service as well, said Doug Warner, who works in communications for Southwestern Electric Power Co. Some "little pockets" of customers without power might have developed, he said, but nothing worse than might happen on any other day.
While the electric grid that serves most of Texas — the Electric Reliability of Council — has called for people to conserve power Tuesday morning, that is not the case in the part of Texas that is part of the Southwest Power Pool. That's an area east of Tyler that consists mostly of SWEPCO customers, including Longview.
"SPP is extending the current Cold Weather Advisory for its entire Balancing Authority through an anticipated end time of 12:00 a.m. CT Sunday, Jan. 21," the Southwest Power Pool reported on its website. "This extends the advisory from a previous anticipated end time of 6 p.m. CT Tuesday, Jan. 16."
The advisory is designed for the organizations within the Southwest Power Pool that generate and transmit power.
"Weather Advisories do not require the public to conserve energy, but are issued to raise awareness of potential threats to reliability among entities responsible for operating transmission and generation facilities," the website says. "The Weather Advisory extension has been declared due to forecasted extreme cold temperatures, potential for gas interruptions, increased risk of cold temperature/icing cutout of wind resources, above normal loading conditions, and potential for generation facility equipment failures."
Warner said SWEPCO is watching for trees and power lines that might get iced over and present a potential problems to electric service. So far, that hasn't happened.