ABC-7 Goes Inside El Paso Electric Power Plant

After the apologies and explanations from El Paso Electric in a news conference, many are still wondering, what’s the hold up?

Why exactly has it taken El Paso Electric so long to fix the problems with the rolling outages?

El Paso Electric owns two plants with eight generators.

A spokeswoman told ABC-7 at this time the good news is they’ve been able to get four of the eight generators up and running again.

The bad news, almost all of their equipment is in really bad shape.

“To see something you’ve never seen at a powerplant is unbelievable,” said Superintendent of Operations at El Paso Electric’s Newman Power Plant David Aranda.

Cooling towers that are essential in keeping the generators cool were frozen solid.

“It’s going to be a slow thawing process,” said Hernandez.

Just as crews repair one area of the plant, another leak was found somewhere else.

Plant officials said they didn’t know if anything could have been done to prevent the pipes and water from freezing.

There is a lot of equipment that has to be repaired. Plant officials are waiting for a complete thaw before they can make a complete assessment of all the damaged pipes and equipment.

Sensors and meters are some of the main reasons generators couldn’t work.

If the sensors don’t work, the generators can’t be started. Even if the sensors could be bypassed, plant officials said operating the generators without the instrumentation would be like flying a plane blind; very dangerous.

“Once the sensing line freezes, the instrument is useless to us. It doesn’t tell us what we need to know; pressure, flow, level, that type of thing,” said plant manager William Byrd.

Byrd said precautions were taken for the cold weather, but they weren’t enough.

“Some spots where we had insulated blankets and heat lamps froze anyway,” said Byrd.

“Right now our main objective is to get power back to the system. With 18-20 hour days, it’s a tough strain, but it’s a tough bunch. We’re doing well,” said Aranda. “We’re trying our best. We are. And we will get the power going.”

The company’s CEO said the priority is to get all the electricity back to normal.

After that, they said they are going to take a good hard look at the power plant’s design, and see what — if anything — they can change to make the equipment less vulnerable in the future.