Austin Energy Outage Map: Track Outages in 2026

The refrigerator hums stop. The ceiling fan coasts to a halt. A few neighbors' porch lights are out too. The first instinct is to grab a phone and figure out whether this is a tripped breaker, a blown transformer on the block, or something bigger rolling across the city.

For residents of Austin and the surrounding service territory, that answer lives at one place: the Austin Energy outage map, available at austinenergy.com. The map refreshes continuously, shows active outages by location, and displays estimated restoration times when crews have assessed the damage. Bookmarking it before the next storm is the single most useful thing an Austin customer can do.

The map plots outage polygons across Austin Energy's service area. Each polygon carries a handful of details: approximate customer count affected, the time the outage was first reported, cause (when known), and a restoration estimate. Tapping or clicking a polygon opens a summary card.

A few things worth knowing before you rely on it:

Refresh manually if the page has been open a while. Browser tabs do not always auto-refresh, and a crew may have restored power in your cluster since you last looked.

Small outages sometimes take a few minutes to appear. A single-transformer outage affecting a handful of homes may lag the map by ten or fifteen minutes while the system registers incoming reports.

Restoration estimates are estimates. If a crew finds additional damage once they reach the site, the estimate updates. A time that slips backward is a sign the damage is more complex than the initial assessment, not a system error.

The map works on mobile browsers without a separate app download, which matters most when a storm has knocked out home Wi-Fi and you are working from cellular data.

Austin Energy asks customers to report outages through three channels.

Online: The outage center page at austinenergy.com has a report link that ties your account address to the outage cluster automatically.

Phone: Austin Energy maintains an outage reporting line. The number is printed on your paper bill and listed on the austinenergy.com contact page. Automated systems handle after-hours reports and feed directly into the dispatch queue.

Text: Customers enrolled in text alerts can text a keyword to Austin Energy's short code to both report and receive status updates. Enrollment is free through your online account portal.

Reporting matters even when your street is already on the map. Each additional report helps dispatchers confirm the scope of an outage and can accelerate the priority ranking of a cluster that affects vulnerable customers, including those registered in Austin Energy's medical baseline or life-support programs.

This is the part that confuses people who have lived in Dallas, Houston, or other deregulated parts of the state. In most of Texas, residents shop for electricity among competing Retail Electric Providers (REPs) on powertochoose.org, the state shopping site run by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Delivery is handled separately by a Transmission and Distribution Utility (TDU) such as Oncor or CenterPoint.

Austin Energy is a municipal utility owned by the City of Austin. It both generates and delivers electricity to its customers. There is no separate REP to call, no Electricity Facts Label to compare, and no competitive market to shop. Your rate is set by the Austin City Council, not by competitive pricing. If you move to a Dallas or Houston zip code, that dynamic changes entirely, and comparing REP plans becomes relevant. You can explore what that looks like at ElectricRates.org's Texas page.

For Austin residents inside the Austin Energy service area, the utility you have is the utility you have. The focus belongs on understanding your bill, using efficiency programs, and knowing how to respond when outages happen.

Austin sits in Central Texas, a geography that delivers a specific set of hazards throughout the year.

Thunderstorms and lightning are the most frequent culprits from spring through early fall. A single lightning strike on a transmission line can trip protective equipment and darken thousands of customers before automatic systems restore the line or crews intervene.

High winds push trees and branches into overhead distribution lines. Austin's urban tree canopy is one of the city's defining features and one of the leading causes of localized outages after fast-moving fronts.

Heat-driven demand events occasionally stress the system during extended triple-digit stretches. Austin Energy draws power from the ERCOT grid, and when statewide demand spikes, grid conditions can affect local reliability even without a direct weather event in the city.

Winter storms remain a serious concern after the February 2021 event that left large portions of the state without power for days. Austin Energy has pursued weatherization upgrades since then, but extreme cold remains a risk for any Texas utility operating on the ERCOT grid.

Equipment failure and scheduled maintenance round out the list. Aging infrastructure anywhere in a distribution system can fail without a weather trigger.

A few practices reduce risk when power goes out, especially during summer heat or winter cold.

Heat safety: Austin summers push heat index values well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Without air conditioning, indoor temperatures can become dangerous within hours for elderly residents, young children, and people with certain medical conditions. Austin Energy and the City of Austin operate cooling centers during heat emergencies. Information on current center locations is posted at austintexas.gov during declared events.

Generator safety: Never run a generator indoors or in an attached garage. Carbon monoxide poisoning is responsible for outage-related deaths every year. Position generators at least twenty feet from any window, door, or vent.

Food safety: A refrigerator holds safe temperature for roughly four hours if the door stays closed. A full freezer holds for about 48 hours, a half-full freezer for around 24. When in doubt, discard perishables.

Medical equipment: If anyone in the household depends on powered medical equipment, register with Austin Energy's life-support notification program in advance. The utility uses the registry to prioritize restoration and notify affected customers before planned outages.

Austin Energy's customer portal allows account holders to enroll in proactive outage notifications by text, email, or both. Once enrolled, the system sends an alert when an outage is detected on your account address, another when a crew is assigned, and a final message when power is restored.

This is worth setting up during a calm period rather than after the lights go out. The enrollment takes about five minutes inside the online account portal at austinenergy.com. The alerts are free.

For households with renters or elderly family members who may not monitor a customer account actively, some account holders share the text alert number with the occupant so the occupant receives direct updates. Austin Energy's terms allow account holders to manage notification preferences, and the online portal explains the options.

Austin Energy's service area covers the City of Austin and portions of the surrounding region, but it does not extend to the entire Austin metro. Cedar Park, Round Rock, Pflugerville, and other suburban communities outside the city limits may fall under a different utility, a co-op, or the deregulated ERCOT market where REP competition applies.

If you move to a deregulated zip code, the process changes significantly. You will choose a REP from powertochoose.org, review each plan's Electricity Facts Label (EFL) to understand the true all-in cost at your expected usage level, and have your power delivered by a TDU such as Oncor or CenterPoint. As of August 2026, all-in advertised rates across active plans in Oncor territory range from roughly 7.2 cents per kilowatt-hour on the low end to a median of about 16.1 cents per kilowatt-hour at 1,000 kWh monthly usage. Comparing those numbers by EFL, not just the headline rate, is how you avoid bill surprises.

ElectricRates.org's Texas electricity guide covers the deregulated market in detail, including how to read an EFL and what TDU delivery fees mean for your monthly total.

Before the next storm, save these.

Outage map: austinenergy.com, outage center section. Works on mobile without an app.

Report an outage: Online at austinenergy.com, by phone (number on your bill or the website contact page), or by text if enrolled in alerts.

Cooling and warming centers: austintexas.gov during declared emergencies.

Life-support and medical baseline programs: Enroll through your Austin Energy account portal or by calling customer service.

Outage alerts: Enroll in text and email notifications inside your austinenergy.com account. Free, takes about five minutes.

For anything related to competitive electricity markets elsewhere in Texas, ElectricRates.org and the PUCT's powertochoose.org are the right starting points.