February 2nd, 2011
Updated: Texas State cancels morning classes Feb. 3

SUBMITTED REPORT

Texas State University has cancelled all classes until 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 3. This affects both the main San Marcos campus and the Round Rock campus.

Although classes are cancelled, university offices will remain open and will maintain normal business hours.

A decision regarding classes Thursday afternoon and evening will be made by noon Thursday. Notification regarding class cancellations will be made on the university home page, via e-mail, through text messages to RAVE subscribers, on the university recorded news bulletin at (512) 245-2424 and will be communicated to media across the region.

Classes have been cancelled due to rolling power blackouts during the recent cold weather. Additional rolling blackouts are expected on Thursday, Feb. 3.

EARLIER:

Texas State University is canceling classes Feb. 2 at noon for the rest of the day and evening schedule as rolling blackouts continue across the state. Although classes will be cancelled, university offices will remain open and maintain normal business hours.

The cancellations affect both the San Marcos and Round Rock campuses. Decisions concerning classes in the morning will occur by 6 p.m. this afternoon. Notification regarding classes will be made on the university home page, via e-mail, through text messages to RAVE subscribers, and will be communicated to media across the region.

The university has been advised by Electrical Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) that rolling brown-outs will continue across the State of Texas as long as the cold temperatures continue this week. Texas State has no control over these brown-outs as ERCOT informs wholesale providers like LCRA of the need to cut back power and LCRA in turn informs retail providers like San Marcos Electric Utility (SMEU) that they are required to take down various electrical substations.  Round Rock is served by an investor-owned utility company that is subject to these rolling brown-outs as well.

The main Texas State campus is primarily served by two different SMEU substations  ERCOT randomly orders brown outs in San Marcos these substations will be taken off line at various times throughout the day and night.  Approximately half of the buildings on campus will be without power each time one of these substations goes down.

Each power outage is predicted to last between 15 to 30 minutes.  However, as power is cut to the University’s Co-generation plant, the hot water boilers that heat our buildings are shut down.  Even though power may be restored in 30 minutes, it then takes an hour or two to reheat the water in the boilers before heat to a building can be restored.

Elevators are a particular problem in these situations.  Power outages can cause passengers to be stranded between floors of a building in an elevator.  Everyone is urged to use the stairwells to avoid getting trapped.

ERCOT has requested that electric consumers across the state minimize electrical consumption to help mitigate the need for these power outages. Consequently, the University requests that all building occupants take steps to reduce your personal electrical consumption.  For example, space heaters being turned on are already causing circuits in some campus buildings to trip off.