Blizzard approaching, what to do if power goes out?

[Bogertophis]

The blackout in Texas are not rolling. They are just straight lose of power. My power went out at 5:45am this morning. And didn’t come back in until 3:15pm. And went back out around 5:25pm. I live in Dallas where they get ice and snow. However, this is crazy. I normally don’t loose power but this time I did. I sit I between three schools and four major shopping centers. Every bar around me is open but the neighborhoods do not have power. I just don’t understand....
My entire street is out. Growing up in Houston I am use to power outages due to weather. Living in north Texas for the last 8 years I have gotten used to rolling blackouts due to heat. However Texas isn’t equipped for teens or even signal digit weather. I am just at a loss at all of this. Just praying that everyone makes through the night.


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I just found this info about the outage(s):

https://weather.com/news/news/2021-0...utages-impacts

Excerpt: (about halfway down is the part about why the outages ran much longer than the 15-45 minutes planned for)

More than 3.6 million Texas homes and businesses were without power Monday evening as record-breaking cold and Winter Storm Uri extended an icy grip across the central United States. In all, more than 4 million outages were being reported in 10 states as of about 6 p.m. EST, according to poweroutage.us.
The Southwest Power Pool, which manages the electric grid across parts of 14 states, warned that demand has exceeded its electric supply, and told its members to begin controlled outages. SPP said individual utilities would determine how to handled the outages.
“After exhausting usage of available reserve energy, SPP has now subsequently directed its member utilities to implement controlled interruptions of service to prevent further, more widespread and uncontrolled outages.” SPP said said.
SPP manages the electric grid in Kansas and Oklahoma, and in parts of New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Iowa, Wyoming, and Nebraska.
Rolling blackouts, which were supposed to last 30 to 60 minutes, had already started in Kansas City and Independence, Missouri, KSHB reported. The alert also affected electric cooperatives across Kansas, including much of the central and western parts of the state, KSHB reported.
Oklahoma Gas & Electric said rolling blackouts also had begun in that state, KWTV reported.
(MORE: Winter Storm Delays COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery; Officials Hustle to Distribute Doses After Power Outage)
In Texas, the agency that oversees most of that state's electric grid declared an "energy emergency alert three" early Monday after the grid experienced a systemwide failure, KTRK reported. The extreme winter weather forced generating units to trip and go offline, according to KXAS-TV.
Instead of rotating outages that were to last 15 to 45 minutes to manage the load, utilities experienced outages that have lasted for hours, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said in a briefing Monday.
“This event was well beyond the design parameters for a typical, or even an extreme, Texas winter that you would normally plan for. And so that is really the result that we're seeing," Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said in the briefing.
Texas set a winter peak demand record Sunday night, and that demand was expected to increase Monday and Tuesday as temperatures fall into the low single digits or colder.
Officials with the Electric Reliability Council said in the briefing it is up to each provider to decide how to shift outages as demand continues to exceed the supply of electricity, according to WFAA.
Blackouts couldn't be rotated in Southeast Texas any longer because there's not enough supply to move around the system, Kenny Mercado, executive vice president for CenterPoint Energy, told KPRC.
“This is a very serious situation, and we do not want the system to go down,” Mercado said. “We’ve got to keep a balance. We have to keep the load demand balanced across Houston, and not only that, but balanced across the entire state of Texas, and we’re watching it very closely.”
CenterPoint customers that still have power are part of the emergency service areas, including water and sewer plants, hospitals, police and 911 centers.
"The Texas power grid has not been compromised," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a tweet Monday afternoon. "The ability of some companies that generate the power has been frozen. This includes the natural gas & coal generators. They are working to get generation back on line."
Abbott later said he had deployed National Guard troops to conduct welfare checks and set up warming shelters.

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Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said several of the warming centers opened in his city had to close because they lost power, the Chronicle reported.




The Dallas Morning News reported that Walmart closed 368 stores in Texas and other Southern states because of the weather. Several grocery stores closed early, too.
(WATCH: How Winter Storm Uri Choked Texas’ Power Grid)