Annual Preparations Completed and Communication Improvements Implemented
January 3, 2022 - With the return of cooler weather, Oncor is assuring customers that winter preparations have been completed and that their power delivery company is prepared for the remaining winter months. Oncor's planning occurs year-round in anticipation of a variety of potential seasonal impacts, and winter preparations are implemented months before the cold season arrives. These preparations include:
- Thousands of electrical facilities, including stations and main feeder lines, have undergone thorough air and ground inspections to ensure they are ready for high demand and cooler temperatures. This is in addition to regularly scheduled facility inspections and maintenance.
- Forecasting and predictive analytics have been utilized to identify potential high load areas so equipment upgrades or replacements could be completed before failures might occur.
- Material inventory has been increased and additional contract resources secured to ensure full availability of supplies and support ahead of potentially severe weather.
- Personnel have completed multiple emergency preparedness training sessions to ensure staff are ready to quickly and safely respond to potential outage events.
As the "poles and wires" company that delivers power to customers, Oncor does not own, operate, or control power generation plants or facilities. Oncor has, however, implemented communication improvements based on learnings from the February 2021 power emergency, as well as followed recent weatherization requirements relevant to delivering power to our customers including:
- Complied with the PUC weatherization rule adopted pursuant to SB3 and submitted its detailed Winter Weather Readiness Report to the PUC and ERCOT. Oncor standard weatherization procedures also remain in compliance with the 2011 FERC/NERC recommendations.
- Worked with our telecommunications providers to harden their systems serving customer call centers and increase communication channel bandwidth to better perform during high volume events. Oncor prioritized this improvement after the February storm, when Oncor received more customer calls in two days than all of 2020.
- Committed to increasing the frequency of situational and weather updates to customers, as supported by the company's in-house meteorologist. Updates will be available across various communication platforms, including My Oncor Alerts, the MyOncor app, Oncor.com and the Storm Center Outage Map, social media channels, and direct contact with local officials.
Met with local officials and emergency management staff across its service territory to better understand community needs, including communication preferences, crisis response plans, and additional information surrounding critical facility designations.