Austin Energy announces permanent solution for SW Austin transformer

AUSTIN, Texas – Austin Energy said a permanent solution is in place for a substation in southwest Austin that went out Thursday night.

Due to the equipment failure, emergency crews had to reroute power lines to restore power to approximately 6,400 customers.

Austin Energy also says customers’ efforts to conserve energy were critical and allowed crews to focus on resuming normal substation operations.

What happened?

On August 22, around 8:20 p.m., a transformer at a substation in southwest Austin went offline, leaving thousands in the dark, Austin Energy said Friday.

Crews responded and worked through the night to simultaneously determine the cause and temporarily reroute power. All customers had power restored within three hours, Austin Energy says.

Crews were able to trace the outage to a faulty component in the transformer, which Austin Energy said had nothing to do with heat or power demand. Several tests were conducted both in the lab and on-site to find other possible faults as well.

After completing the tests, Austin Energy concluded that permanent repairs to the transformer were safe.

At 10:00 a.m. on August 23, customers near the substation were asked to conserve energy during repairs.

Austin Energy says these energy-saving measures and slightly cooler temperatures allowed it to maintain temporary power diversion while technicians permanently repaired the transformer and returned it to service.