News

6/3/2010

Severe Thunderstorms Knock Out Power to Thousands of Bluebonnet Members

Bastrop – A line of strong thunderstorms rolled through Central Texas Wednesday, June 2, knocking out electricity to about 3,000 Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative members. Crews worked through the night and early Thursday morning to restore power.
 
“Severe weather is a part of Texas summers,” said Mark Rose, Bluebonnet’s chief executive officer. “Last night’s storms packed high winds, severe lightning and a lot of rain. Our crews worked hard to get our members’ power back on as safely and as quickly as possible.”
 
When severe weather was predicted, Bluebonnet increased the number of crews on standby Wednesday afternoon in order to respond quickly to storm-related outages. During the storm, Bluebonnet had up to 22 two-man crews working to repair lines and restore power.
 
Most of the outages occurred in Bastrop and Caldwell counties and were caused by lightning strikes. The most outages at one time were 100 between midnight and 1 a.m. Thursday.
 
The largest outage affected 1,466 members in Bastrop County. Bluebonnet’s control center operators were able to restore power by rerouting electricity through other power lines while crews worked to repair the damaged line.
 
At 6 a.m. Thursday, Bluebonnet had 48 outages affecting 386 members concentrated in Bastrop and Caldwell counties.
 
“We expect to have power fully restored to all our members by noon,” Rose said. “We greatly appreciate our members’ patience and understanding during these outages.”
 
Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative is one of the largest electric cooperatives in Texas and has been serving its members since 1939. Bluebonnet serves 80,000 meters and owns and maintains 11,000 miles of power lines, located across more than 3,800 square miles within 14 Central Texas counties. Bluebonnet’s service area stretches from Travis County to Washington County and from Milam County down to Gonzales County. For more information about Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative go to www.bluebonnetelectric.coop, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

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