Austin Energy reports full restoration after May 28 microburst; estimates $6.5 million in immediate costs

Interim General Manager Stuart Riley told the Austin Energy Utility Oversight Committee on May 28 that Austin Energy restored power to all customers after a microburst storm that struck the city on the evening of May 28.

Riley said the event produced a rapid spike in outages — a peak of about 72,500 customers were without power at one time — and that 124,000 unique customers were without power at some point during the restoration. "We had 91 power poles that we replaced, 52 transformers, 32,000 feet of overhead cable," Riley said. He added that Austin Energy, contract crews, and mutual aid providers put nearly 1,000 people into the field during the response and that initial response costs are estimated at $6,500,000, a number he said is likely to rise as mutual aid invoices are finalized.

The storm brought short, intense rainfall, hail, high winds and lightning concentrated in a west-to-east band across Austin, Riley said. He described damage ranging from uprooted trees and roofs torn off homes to a transmission-line strike near Longhorn Dam when a construction-barge crane was pushed into a line and required helicopter work to repair.

Riley described a phased restoration approach used during the response. Phase 1 focused on restoring critical loads and mainline circuits — hospitals, first-responder locations and critical communications — to reestablish the system backbone. Phase 2 moved crews onto lateral lines affecting neighborhoods, prioritizing by number of customers and age of outage. Phase 3 addressed isolated outages down to single-customer service drops and transformer-level repairs. "During phase 1, we need to focus our restoration activities on getting critical load customers back online," Riley said. He added that the Department of Sustainable Development (DSD) helped expedite permitting for required customer-side work.

Riley said Austin Energy implemented newly introduced incident-management processes and pre-drafted mutual-aid contracts during the response and is conducting a May microburst after-action review that will be completed in October. The utility also conducted multiple community outreach events and used targeted texts, emails and social media to keep customers informed.

Council members praised field crews and Austin Energy communications. Councilmember Harper-Madison said clearer communications improved public patience during outages; Councilmember Duchin and others noted challenges reaching customers with drained devices and suggested continued outreach and redundant communications, including preparedness pop-ups that provide batteries and hand-crank radios. Riley acknowledged the challenge and said Austin Energy has been incorporating redundancy and door-to-door outreach into preparedness and recovery efforts.

Questions from the council touched on budget impacts and federal reimbursements. Riley and other speakers said Austin Energy budgets a contingency — cited at roughly $20 million in a multibillion-dollar budget — to cover emergency events, but that reimbursements (for example from FEMA) are uncertain. "We're not optimistic" about the future of some federal reimbursements, Riley said, and noted that storm costs can erode cash reserves while the utility bridges expenses.

The committee did not take any formal action on the storm response during the meeting; Riley said the utility will report back with the after-action findings and implementation steps.

Less critical details included that Austin Energy's outage map handled higher traffic better than in prior storms after upgrades, and that one transmission repair required helicopter work. The after-action report is expected in October and the utility said it will continue refining mutual-aid contracts, damage-assessment processes and phased restoration communications.