More than 18,000 El Paso Electric customers were left in the dark Tuesday as storms rolled through the borderland, knocking out power in 62 separate outages stretching from Garfield and Salem, New Mexico, all the way to East El Paso County. The utility's outage map showed the damage spread across a wide swath of the service area, with crews scrambling to restore power as the sun went down.
According to KTSM 9 News, the outages hit Tuesday, September 29, 2026. Local station KVIA similarly reported the outage was triggered by storms moving through the borderland, with the utility initially estimating restoration by 7:45 p.m.
Downed Wires Force Road Closures in Canutillo
The storm's damage wasn't limited to lost power. In Canutillo, downed live electrical lines forced the El Paso County Sheriff's Office to close portions of Second, Third, and Fourth streets near La Mesa Street early Tuesday, leaving more than 3,600 customers without electricity, KVIA reported in a related Canutillo outage report. Live wires on the ground present an immediate hazard, and the closures kept traffic away from the affected blocks while crews worked to secure the area.
This is far from the first time storms have knocked out power across the region this month. Just two weeks earlier, on September 16, a separate severe weather event caused 55 outages that cut power to nearly 11,000 El Paso Electric customers across West El Paso and southern New Mexico, according to KTSM 9 News reporting on Facebook. That followed an outage on September 23 that hit more than 7,000 customers, and one on September 17 that knocked out power to roughly 8,000 customers across 40 locations, both previously covered by Hoodline.
A Grid Built Differently From the Rest of Texas
El Paso Electric supplies roughly 465,000 customers across a 10,000-square-mile service territory stretching from Hatch, New Mexico, to Van Horn, Texas, according to company regulatory statements reported by EIN Presswire. Unlike most Texas utilities, El Paso Electric is not part of the ERCOT grid — it's interconnected instead with the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, meaning the emergency protocols that apply statewide under ERCOT don't apply here, as El Paso News has reported.
That structural independence has taken on new significance as the utility works to modernize its system. Industry publication EnergyChoiceMatters.com reported that El Paso Electric notified Texas regulators of its plan to join the Southwest Power Pool's Markets+.
Recurring Storm Damage
Summer storms continue to test the system. Back on August 1, a major storm downed 11 power poles and cut electricity to nearly 17,000 customers across 70 distinct outage locations, a blackout Hoodline covered at the time.
With storms continuing to trip lines across the region into late September, the tension between long-term grid upgrades and short-term weather disruptions remains squarely in view for borderland residents waiting for their lights to come back on.
