Houston homes, businesses go dark in rolling blackouts Houston area under rolling blackouts

ERCOT, which overseers power supplies in Texas, has asked electrical companies to institute "rotating outages" to compensate for increased demands for electricity during the wintry cold snap gripping the state.

Hospitals and other critical services such as nursing homes are not affected by the plan, according to ERCOT. The effort is designed to prevent generators from becoming over loaded, which may led to a regional blackout.

In the Houston area, CenterPoint Energy officials said they began the periodic outages about 5:45 a.m. today. The outages are limited to no more than about 45 minutes and an average of 330,000 customers will be affected on a rotating basis.

CenterPoint Energy pre-determined which circuits and power lines will be systematically shut down or curtailed temporarily across its service territory to reduce usage. The company expects to avoid turning off circuits to critical facilities, such as hospitals, water treatment plants and other vital public services.

"This is a statewide emergency and CenterPoint Energy is complying with direct orders from ERCOT," said Scott Prochazka, division senior vice president of CenterPoint Energy's electric transmission and delivery operations.

"Although we realize this is an inconvenience for our customers, these controlled rolling outages are planned emergency measures designed to avoid potentially longer, and more widespread power outages. We will continue these rolling outages until we receive direction from ERCOT that the electric supply in Texas has stabilized."