Texans face outages from winter storm, despite strong power grid; see latest numbers

POWER OUTAGE TRACKER FOR SOUTHEAST TEXAS

HOUSTON - Here are the latest power outage numbers as of 12:15 p.m. Friday.*

- CenterPoint Energy is reporting 2,434 customers without power.

- Entergy Texas is reporting 356 customers without power.

*These numbers include outages unrelated to weather.

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Tens of thousands of Texans were hit with power outages Thursday as the northern parts of the state got hit with a wintry precipitation, from a winter storm that spanned nearly 3,000 miles across the U.S.

Texas Winter Storm: What Houston area can expect

At a press conference at the State Operations Center on Thursday morning, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said 70,000 Texans were without electricity because of ice-covered power lines or fallen trees, not because of problems with the power grid.

"We are dealing with one of the most significant icing events that we’ve had in the state of Texas in at least several decades," he said.

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"As compared to last year, Texas has 15% more power generation capacity. There’s also more reserve power available than last year," Abbott said. "The grid is projected to have a surplus of more than 10,000 megawatts for peak demand tomorrow on Friday morning which we expect to be the peak demand of the winter storm."

ERCOT also has a public dashboard that shows up-to-date grid and market conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SEE ERCOT'S DASHBOARD ON CURRENT CONDITIONS

About 10,000 linemen were working to restore power, and 2,000 more crews were being brought in from outside the state to help.

By 3 p.m. Thursday, the number had dropped with PowerOutage.Us reporting 40,000 customers without power.

RELATED: ERCOT issuing Winter Weather Watch in Texas through Sunday

Gov. Abbott also issued a disaster declaration for 17 counties that includes all of North Texas.

FOX Weather contributed to this report.