Texas power outage map
Where the power is out across Texas right now, and how long your food has while yours is off.
Right now 131 customers are without power in Texas, across 16 counties reported by 1 utility, according to the US Department of Energy's ODIN feed.
Power out at your place? Work out how long the food in your fridge and freezer has.See what's still good131
Customers out
16
Counties affected
1
Utilities reporting
Texas
131 customers out · 16 counties
Live data from the US Department of Energy's ODIN feed, which carries 44 reporting utilities rather than every utility in the country. If yours isn't here, check your utility directly or poweroutage.us. Updated every 10 minutes.
You can have electricity at home in an outage.
It takes less than most people assume. Provision Planner works out what covers a night, a week or a month of your own power, and shows how close you already are.
Already own a battery? See how long it would actually run your fridge. Thinking about panels? See how many months solar would cover.
Reporting in Texas
- Centerpoint Energy131 out
What takes the power out in Texas
- HurricaneWhat to have ready before it happens
- Winter stormWhat to have ready before it happens
- Grid failureWhat to have ready before it happens
Most affected right now
Outage maps by state
Not on the map above? Here is who to call in Texas.
The live map above only shows utilities that publish to the Department of Energy's open feed, and in Texas that is CenterPoint plus one co-op. If you are in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio or most of west Texas, your outage will not appear there, so go straight to your own utility below. One thing trips up almost everyone in Texas: in the deregulated parts of the state the company that sends your bill is not the company that fixes your line. You report an outage to the wires company for your area, marked below, no matter who you buy power from.
Oncor
Report hereDallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Tyler, Midland and most of north and west Texas
Text OUT to 6626 if you have signed up for MyOncor alerts.
CenterPoint Energy
Report hereHouston and the surrounding Gulf Coast counties
Pick the Texas service area when the tracker opens; it also covers Indiana.
AEP Texas
Report hereCorpus Christi, the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo and the coastal bend
Texas-New Mexico Power
Report hereScattered areas including parts of the Gulf Coast, west Texas and north Texas
Select 1 to report an outage.
Austin Energy
Austin and parts of Travis County
City-owned, so Austin is not deregulated. Austin Energy is both your biller and your line crew.
CPS Energy
San Antonio and Bexar County
City-owned, same as Austin. One company bills you and restores you.
Numbers and links checked against each utility's own site on 2026-10-02.
What an outage in Texas is actually like
Texas is the only state that cannot borrow its way out
The lower 48 runs on two large interconnections, Eastern and Western, and neighbours lean on each other constantly. ERCOT, which carries roughly 90 percent of Texas electric load, ties to neither in any meaningful capacity. It has only a handful of small direct-current links to its neighbours and Mexico. When Texas runs short, it largely cannot buy power from anyone. That is a planning fact, not a political one: it means a statewide shortage in Texas tends to be deeper and longer than the same weather would produce in, say, Ohio. Not all of Texas lives under it. El Paso sits on the Western Interconnection, parts of East Texas are in MISO, and the Panhandle is in SPP, which is why El Paso came through February 2021 largely intact while most of the state did not.
Plan against February 2021, not against the four-hour rule
Winter Storm Uri took power from roughly four and a half million Texas homes and businesses, and many of them were dark for days rather than hours, in sub-freezing temperatures, with water systems failing at the same time. Most refrigerator guidance is written for a summer afternoon blip: keep the door shut and you have about four hours. That advice is correct and it is not the advice Uri called for. A Texas plan that only covers four hours is covering the easy case. The useful question in this state is what you eat on day three with no power and no safe tap water, which is a pantry question rather than a refrigerator question.
A July outage in Houston is a harder food problem than a January one in Dallas
When Beryl came ashore in July 2024 it took out more than two million CenterPoint customers around Houston, and some waited over a week in heat indices above 100 degrees. Heat is what makes that case so hard. The standard four-hour refrigerator window assumes a house sitting at room temperature; a Houston house with no air conditioning in July climbs into the 90s indoors, and the window shortens accordingly. January inverts it. A hard freeze means the outdoors is doing the work of a freezer, a cooler on a shaded porch genuinely holds, and the garage becomes usable cold storage. Same state, opposite problems, about six months apart, and the reason a single generic answer serves Texans badly.
| When | What usually takes the power out | What that does to your food |
|---|---|---|
| February | Generation forced offline, ice loading lines | Cold is on your side; heat and water are the emergency |
| July to September | Hurricane wind and flooding, slow restoration | The hardest case: heat shortens the window, outages run days |
| August | Peak demand against available supply, conservation calls | Usually short and announced; mostly an inconvenience |
Three different emergencies wearing the same words. The summer ones are the ones worth stocking for, because they combine long restoration with the worst possible temperature for a refrigerator.
The power is out. Here's how long your food has.
The USDA gives a closed refrigerator about four hours, a full freezer roughly 48 and a half-full one 24. Tell it how long you've been out and it does the rest. Longer version in how long a freezer stays cold without power.
Freezer is
Refrigerator
1h
USDA gives a closed fridge about four hours.
Freezer, full
1d 21h
A full freezer holds roughly 48 hours unopened.
Do this, in order
- Right nowKeep both doors shut. Every opening spends time you can't get back.
- Next mealEat from the fridge first: leftovers, dairy, anything already opened.
- If you're on a wellNo power means no pump. Fill containers and the bathtub now if you haven't.
- PhonesDrop to low power mode and stop using them as torches. Your car is a charger.
These timers assume you know what's in there. Keep the count in Provision Planner and the answer is about your actual food.
The other deadline
Everything gets harder after dark.
7:17 PM
Sunset in Texas tonight. Find what you need before then, not by the light of the phone you are trying to save.
Before it goes
- Count your lightHeadlamps before flashlights, because you need your hands. Find them and test the batteries while you can still see to do it.
- Your car is a chargerA running engine refills phones and power banks. Outside only, never in an attached garage, and not with the door open either. That is how carbon monoxide kills people in outages.
- Ration the phonesA 20,000mAh bank is roughly four full phone charges. Put one phone on low power mode as the household's line and switch the rest off.
The next questions, answered
Why does Texas lose power in conditions other states handle?
Mostly because it cannot import much. ERCOT is effectively an electrical island covering about 90 percent of the state, so when Texas generation drops, there is no large neighbouring grid to draw from the way the Eastern and Western interconnections draw from each other.
Does the four-hour refrigerator rule hold in a Texas summer?
Treat it as a ceiling rather than an expectation. The rule assumes an indoor temperature near 70 degrees. A house without air conditioning in July sits far above that, and the window closes faster. A full freezer is the more reliable asset: kept shut, it holds far longer than the refrigerator does.
Is El Paso on the same grid as the rest of Texas?
No. El Paso is part of the Western Interconnection rather than ERCOT, which is the main reason it avoided the worst of the February 2021 blackouts while most of the state was losing power.
What should I do in the first hour of a power outage?
Find your light before dark, because hunting for a headlamp by phone screen burns the battery you are about to need. Leave the fridge and freezer shut. Charge phones and power banks now if you have a car or a battery, and run the car outside, never in an attached garage, even with the door open. Then check whether your utility has posted an estimate, which the map above pulls in for you.
What can I still run when the power is out?
More than most people assume. A mid-size power station will hold phones, a router and lamps going for days, and a car with the engine running is a charger. A fridge is the hard one: the compressor asks for roughly 800 watts for a split second to start, so a small station that only surges to 600 will not turn it on at all. Heat is the other one. Anything that warms a room empties any battery within the hour.
How long does food last in a refrigerator without power?
The USDA gives an unopened refrigerator about 4 hours and a full freezer roughly 48, half that if the freezer is only half full. Food with ice crystals still on it can be refrozen. Every time the door opens the clock speeds up, so write down what is in there instead of looking twice.
How many days of power does my household actually have?
Add up what already makes light and power in your house: batteries, lanterns, power banks, a generator and the fuel for it. Provision Planner counts those the way it counts food and water and turns them into a number of days for the people who live there, then tells you the cheapest thing to add next. Most households have more than they think in the first day and less than they think by the third.
We'll help protect you next time.
Outages are common, and they can feel out of control. With Provision Planner, real preparedness and independence mean you can avoid that completely. We help normal families everywhere stay one step ahead.