It could be months before North Texas residents get a complete picture of the price of restoring power after this week’s severe weather, but the bill is likely to be passed on to Oncor’s customers, the utility said Friday.
Downed trees and power lines and broken equipment can result in overtime and expensive efforts to replace or rebuild infrastructure, especially when multiple rounds of thunderstorms move through in the same week.
Four days of recurring rain and thunder has left many in North Texas without power. Earlier this week, storms knocked out power to 650,000 homes and businesses in North Texas. As of Friday, 50,000 customers still did not have power, a statement from Oncor said.
Oncor said it might ask the Texas Public Utility Commission for a rate increase once costs from the storm recovery are tabulated.
So far, Oncor has 12,000 personnel working around the clock in the North-Central Texas region, the utility said. That includes workers from other utility companies, referred to as mutual assistance partners, who have come in from states such as Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Missouri, said Grant Cruise, a spokesperson for Oncor.
Some of the costs incurred by those companies won’t be known until after the work is completed. For instance, Oncor doesn’t arrange hotels for out-of-state workers. Partnering utilities submit requests for reimbursement later.
“Then we help them recover that cost, and then the cost is recovered for us from customers,” Cruise said.
This week’s storms crossed a wide part of Oncor’s service territory.
“Typically, we see storms start in one area and do some damage, and then weaken as it moves. This one didn’t seem to weaken a lot,” Cruise said.
What’s fixed and what isn’t is a moving number.
On Wednesday, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said on the social media platform X that there were 25 feeders — high-voltage power lines that distribute electricity from a substation to hundreds of households — that needed to be repaired before they could be powered from the substation. By Friday, zero feeders were out in Dallas County, Cruise said.
Oncor has almost 5,500 feeders across its 55,000-square-mile service territory.
But just because something is fixed doesn’t mean the next bout of rain, wind and lightning didn’t knock something else down. Storms can often soften the ground, impact trees and move debris around. Debris has also slowed work as it’s often blocking damaged equipment. The full picture of damage would be clearer next week.
It is possible some of the infrastructure survived the first round of storms, Cruise said. “But then the next round was kind of the straw that breaks the camel’s back and finally pushes some of that stuff over,” he said.
David Branch, a Dallas public works manager, said it was likely that a combination of high winds, saturation from heavy rain and old trees led to the large amount of debris and power lines going down.
“It’s not as bad as the (2019) tornado that hit North Dallas, but it’s pretty close,” Branch said. “Trees everywhere.”
A series of tornadoes ripped through North Texas in October 2019 toppling trees and power lines, and leveling homes and businesses over a 15-mile path that stretched from northwest Dallas to Richardson. Property damage was estimated at $2 billion.
Friday was supposed to be an off day for Branch’s six work crews, but lingering service calls for downed trees meant they were back on duty.
The crews typically work from 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday through Thursday. But their hours have been stretching to 8 p.m. every day since Tuesday, Branch said. The crews are made up of at least four people each.
“Luckily, I have people who really don’t complain and really just want to help people,” Branch said. “Otherwise it’d be more rough than it is. And it’s been rough sometimes.”
Cost of undergrounding lines could be too high
Branch said many of the calls his crews are covering are in the Oak Cliff, West Dallas, South Dallas areas and just outside of downtown. He said his crews have responded to several hundred calls since Tuesday.
Many of the areas they’ve responded to are in older neighborhoods, where a lot of trees and overhead power lines are common. Branch said he thinks burying power lines could be an option to consider in those areas, but it would be unlikely to happen because of the costs and widespread construction impacts.
“You’d probably have to reconstruct almost the whole city,” he said.
In Dallas, the vast majority of power lines are above ground, Cruise said.
Overhead construction is the standard application. Distributors like Oncor have two types of lines — distribution facilities on the wooden poles that run from the substation into neighborhoods, and transmission lines that move electricity from the generation plants into the substations along taller towers and steel poles. Underground transmission lines come with a higher price tag.
“The cost to safely build and maintain these lines is substantial, possibly millions of dollars per single mile,” Cruise said.
The cost of building these lines generally falls on developers. Once a development is established with alleys, driveways, fences and other utilities, it is difficult and expensive to move existing above ground lines underground.
“It’s been nonstop”
Oncor expects the work to continue into the next week. That also seemed to be the case for the city crews. Friday morning, Branch’s crew got a call about a large tree down on a fire truck outside a city fire station near West Commerce Street and Evanston Avenue.
When he and supervisor Jose Zaragoza Jr. arrived at the West Dallas Fire Station 54 around noon, the tree was upright, but the low hanging branches were touching the roof of the truck and other leaf-filled branches were covering overhead power lines.
By 12:13 p.m., a public works crew arrived, the fire truck was driven out from under the tree and the crew went to work.
One of the workers, Noe Valenciana, used a pole saw to cut the lowest hanging branch. Another crew member later drove a dump truck into the fire station driveway for Valenciana to stand in the flat bed and reach the higher branches.
Another crew member directed traffic. At least five others either picked up the fallen tree branches or cut them into small pieces to pile up at the side of the road.
“It’s been nonstop,” Zaragoza said. “We have a lot of trees, older trees and in a lot of places, they’re just giving out.”
A firefighter shot free throws at a basketball hoop at the side of the station at one point as the crew worked. At another point, a passenger in a passing car stuck their head out of the vehicle window and yelled to the crew, “Thank you! Gracias!”
Branch smiled and nodded to the car as it continued down the road.
The crew finished a little after 1 p.m. All the branches that were hanging over the fire truck were cut as well as most of the branches covering the wires.
“The wires make it tricky,” Valenciana said. “I did what I could.”
