El Paso Electric upgrades get first cold-weather test

EL PASO, Texas - With concerns over last year's power grid failure in Texas, El Paso Electric opened its doors to one of its power stations to show off its weather upgrades.

El Paso was spared from 2021's power outages because it's not connected to the same power grid as other parts of Texas managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as ERCOT for short.

Previously, Borderland power stations were designed to endure and operate in under 10-degree weather.

El Paso engineers tell ABC-7 recent upgrades can provide power to your home without major failure at even minus ten-degree weather, an improvement of 20 degrees.

"So we've gone through and added some heat tracing. We've added some insulation," said David Rodriguez, senior director of power generation.

Rodrguez and other engineers are in charge of upgrading the power company's three main power stations, like the Newman power station.

"Well, right now, we're designed to minus ten degrees right. But the challenge is if it's a prolonged extreme weather event, similar to what we saw in Central and Eastern Texas, last year where it was 7, 8 days below zero degrees, then that's where the unforeseen situations come in," added Rodriguez.

Rodriguez and his team identified key components that were exposed to the elements and would have an impact on readings used to make necessary adjustments.

"So we were able to identify some of these locations that are seeing accelerated wind patterns where we were to able to come back in create windbreaks with actual structures around instrumentation equipment," said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez pointed out crews are already working on upgrading the system for the summer season.
He says power output is greater during the summer months than in the winter.