Put simply, North Texas is a mess.
Rotating power outages. Drivers contending with icy roads. Low gas pressure. Temperatures in the teens.
Area residents woke up Wednesday morning with Tuesday's chilly, slick legacy but electric providers in the state added a new wrinkle -- rotating blackouts that started at about 6 a.m.
The entire state will experience the planned power outages Wednesday as officials try to maintain the integrity of the state’s power grid during the extreme cold weather that is gripping much of Texas.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas instructed local utilities to begin rotating outages throughout the state Wednesday morning, an ERCOT official said.
"We lost several units last night because of the extreme weather conditions," said Dottie Roark, an ERCOT spokeswoman in Austin.
The outages should last 10 to 45 minutes per neighborhood, officials said.
Generally, hospitals, nursing homes and other such facilities will not be included in the outages.
Roark said she did not know how long the rotating outages order would be in effect in the state.
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