El Paso Electric Report Details Equipment Preparations, Efforts During Storm Outages

El Paso Electric officials, in a report to a state agency, said its equipment could not maintain the unprecedented near zero temperatures that froze many of their generators early this month and that is what led to its losing the ability to generate power locally for several days.

The report to the Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas, states that only the utility’s newest generator is known to be able to perform at 14-degree temperatures, but that it requires more investigation to know what temps the rest of the generators can take. According to the report, their first equipment failures began the afternoon of February 1. The low that day was 14 degrees – what the report states their newest equipment could take.

All eight generators in the company’s two main power plants suffered damage and at one point, did not create any electricity during storm and the days following the storm. The company relied on a local copper plant, energy from the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Arizona, and a coal-based plant in New Mexico. The company also had to purchase electricity from the free market. Many customers in their service area experienced outages.

An El Paso Electric spokesman, during the storm, initially told ABC-7 wind chills made the difference. “It is the wind chill that caused the freezing of our equipment at all of our power plants,” said PR Director Henry Quintana.

Wind chills though, do not affect temperatures on machinery, only how cold it feels on human skin. ABC-7’s Chief Meteorologist “Doppler” Dave Speelman explained the wind chill effect.

“If it’s 5 degrees outside, it will not get below five degrees on that equipment, but it will just get to that actual air temperature faster with the wind,” he said.

El Paso Electric officials said they thought it would be inappropriate to answer questions on the report before the PUC questions the company regarding the document.

The report details El Paso Electric’s efforts to protect its equipment two days before the storm, by doing things like making sure their space heaters and lamps were working. In a news conference during the storm and the rolling outages, a company official said they didn’t cover the equipment or add heading lamps until after the equipment began failing.

There are discrepancies in the report regarding the actual temperatures during the storm. The report states that for Wednesday, February 2, the forecast high was 37 degrees. A company spokeswoman said they used forecasts from the National Weather Service for the report. However, both the National Weather Service and ABC-7 forecast it would be 30 or below.

Aside from preparing 48 hours in advance, the report also points out that El Paso Electric prepares for the winter months in September and October by making sure heat tracing circuits, heat lamps and space heaters are working. They also check all insulation is properly installed.

The report commends the company’s workers, some who stood in the negative degree wind chills for hours at a time, with blow torches, trying to warm up sensing lines.

Also in the lengthy document, an explanation of how the electric company interrupted the service of other utilities. The report claims that in the midst of the rolling outages, the electric company contacted a representative from El Paso Water Utilities to check which areas were not critical to EPWU’s operations and could be included in the outages. Once the electric and water company agreed on ‘critical’ areas, they included the others in the planned outages. According to the document, though, the next day, Friday, February 4, EPWU representatives called EPE and asked that some additional areas, ‘which had previously been approved for inclusion’ in the outages, be excluded – something the Electric Company says it did immediately.

As for gas service, the document states that “natural gas distribution compressing stations or similar gas entities are not given critical load status.” There are four of those stations in the area used by El Paso Natural Gas Co.

Of those four, two were affected by the rolling outages. The document goes on to state “EPE is unaware how the controlled load shedding may have affected either of these compressor stations or the natural gas pipeline as a whole.”

EPE stated in the conclusion of its report that it had done all it could to prepare for the weather but the weather was just too cold.

Read the full report El Paso Electric Report To Public Utility Commission On 2011 Winter Storm Event

Read the report on the El Paso Electric Winter Storm 2011 Infrastructure Checklist