This post has been updated.
Monday January 5, 3:30 PM: AEP Texas says 95% of the people that lost power during the ice storm in Alpine now have it back.
The company said Monday morning the number of outages with its customers in the Big Bend area was down to around 160 – down from around 5,400 on Saturday afternoon.
AEP’s Fred Hernandez said those last few outages were mainly on the western part of Alpine.
The Sunny Glen subdivision is reported to have all of its power back today. Most of those residents had their power back Sunday night around 10 p.m., along with the 500 or so people who lost power in Marathon.
Power was restored to all of Fort Davis on Saturday.
Around 1,600 outages were still reported Monday afternoon in more rural parts of the region - including in Pecos, Jeff Davis, Culberson, Terrell, Presidio, Hudspeth, Brewster in Reeves Counties.
Click here for the latest outage reports from Rio Grande Electric Co-Op, and here for outage details from AEP Texas.
Original Post
Most of the power outages that swept the Big Bend over the weekend had been repaired as of late Sunday night, but some work continued into Monday morning.
AEP Texas reported Sunday around 9:30 p.m. that about 660 of its customers were still without power.
Repair work continued in Marathon and the Sunny Glenn subdivision near Alpine. AEP says in both places, power was momentarily restored, but new outages came after a surge in residents using electricity all at once.
Sunday night, AEP was working on restoring power section-by-section in Sunny Glen. The company didn't give an exact timeline for when those repairs would be completed, but it did say it still expected power to be restored in Marathon by Sunday evening.
Work crews had a hard time accessing some of the downed power poles in the region because of muddy, rugged conditions on country roads, but repairs have sped up since better weather's moved into the region.
In all, the four major transmission lines serving the Big Bend area were lost in the ice storm. One of those lines and a substation in Alpine were brought back online Saturday, but work continues on the other three lines.
Sunday morning, about 1,500 Rio Grande Electric Co-Op customers in the more rural parts of the region were still without power.
Meanwhile in the Permian Basin, more than 300 people were still without power around Midland-Odessa and along the I-20 corridor. That's down from more than 27,000 Oncor customers who lost power over the weekend.
