AUSTIN, Texas — Austin Energy is asking some residents to conserve power Friday afternoon after an outage impacted thousands of residents Thursday night.
At approximately 8:20 p.m. Thursday, crews responded to an outage after a transformer went offline in southwest Austin, affecting at least 6,400 customers in the area near Oak Hill and Eanes ISD.
An hour later, roughly 4,000 users had their power back on, with about 2,000 still left in the dark.
Around 2 a.m. Friday, those still without power were "switched to other circuits" as "a temporary solution," Austin Energy said.
Austin Energy is still trying to find a permanent fix as crews continue to address the issue. The utility company said it's testing the current transformer in an attempt to return service on Friday, but that could take at least a day.
During this time, a temporary transformer is in use and some customers could lose power.
Austin Energy said the outage is a local concern and is not related to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
Southwest Austinites asked to conserve power Friday
Southwest Austin residents are being asked to use limited energy between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Friday.
Austin Energy said customers should increase their thermostats slightly and avoid using vents in rooms that are not in use. Window units in unused rooms should also be turned off.
Customers should also close blinds facing the sun, unplug all devices not being used and should also avoid using ovens during the peak heat of the day.
Other outages this week
This isn't the first time Austinites have lost power this week.
On Wednesday, nearly 15,000 East Austinites experienced outages as the city tied the record for the ninth-hottest day, at 109 degrees.
The same night, Austin ISD's Central Office also lost power. The building was closed Thursday and Friday after a backup generator failed.
Like Thursday's outage, Wednesday's outage in East Austin was also caused by local infrastructure. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said that the outage "was related to high energy usage causing substation equipment to trip offline."
Austin Energy said Friday that it does not believe the Wednesday and Thursday outages were releated.
Temperatures are set to trend downward this weekend, but it's uncertain if additional outages could occur.