5 ERCOT board members to resign
Review begins in power grid failures; all who vacated live outside of state
The chair, vice chair and three members of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas will resign from the state power grid manager Wednesday, a week after a historic winter storm forced statewide blackouts, disrupted water supplies and left dozens of people dead.
Chair Sally Talberg, vice chair Peter Cramton and board members Raymond Hepper, Terry Bulger and Vanessa Anesetti-parra will step down after an emergency meeting Wednesday, according to the Public Utility Commission, which oversees the grid manager.
Among the 15 ERCOT board members, Bulger oversees the finance and audit committee and Hepper chairs the human resources and governance committee. Craig S. Ivey, who was set to fill the open 16th seat on ERCOT’S board is withdrawing his candidacy, the PUC said.
“We look forward to working with the Texas Legislature, and we thank the outgoing Board Members for their service,” ERCOT said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.
Soon after the resignations were announced, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement critical of the nonprofit organization, which assured Texans before the storm that it could keep the power on despite concerns of massive demand for electricity.
“When Texans were in desperate need of electricity, ERCOT failed to do its job and Texans were left shivering in their homes without power,” Abbott said. “ERCOT leadership made assurances that Texas’ power infrastructure was prepared for the winter storm, but those assurances proved to be devastatingly false. The lack of preparedness and transparency at ERCOT is unacceptable, and I welcome these resignations.”
The five current board members all live out of state.
Talberg lives in Michigan and joined ERCOT’S board in January 2020 and was a former Michigan utility regulator. Before her seven years on the Michigan Public Service Commission, Talberg was a senior consultant at Public Sector Consultants and an advisor to the PUC. She has a master’s degree in public affairs from the University of Texas, according to ERCOT’S website.
Cramton, of Del Mar, Calif., joined ERCOT’S board in October 2015. He is an economics professor at the University of Maryland and the University of Cologne. He studied electricity market design and serves as an economist and advisor to startups in finance, insurance and communications.
Bulger, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton, according to ERCOT, has more than 35 years of experience in banking. Abbott promised a state investigation of ERCOT to “ensure that the disastrous events of last week are never repeated.”
Hepper, who lives in Lewiston, Maine, according to his Linkedin profile, was the former general counsel for ISO New England, which operates the electric grid and wholesale markets across six states in the Northeast.
Anesetti-parra, who lives in Ontario, Canada, is vice president of regulatory and compliance for Canada-based Just Energy. She has more than 19 years of experience in retail energy, according to her Linkedin profile.
In a resignation letter from Talberg, Cramton, Bulger and Hepper, said they will begin the process of reviewing the events leading up to the power crisis.
“We want what is best for ERCOT and Texas,” they wrote.
Crampton refused to comment when reached on Tuesday. Efforts to reach the other board members were unsuccessful.
ERCOT’S independent board members — those unaffiliated with various energy-related stakeholders — are nominated by a committee using an executive search firm and must have experience in one or more of the following: corporate leadership, regulations of utilities, risk management, information technology and in professional disciplines of finance, accounting, engineering or law. Residence in Texas is preferred, but not required, according to ERCOT’S bylaws. Board members serve three-year terms and must be approved by the PUC, whose commissioners are appointed by the governor.
Texas created ERCOT in 1970 to ensure that the state’s power utilities followed standards established two years earlier by the North American Electric Reliability Council, a voluntary industry organization that now enforces mandatory reliability standards.
ERCOT is one of three power grids in the U.S. and Canada, with the Eastern and Western grids roughly separated by the Rocky Mountains. ERCOT, however, covers about 75 percent of the state and manages about 90 percent of the state’s power load. Far Western Texas, parts of the Panhandle and a narrow swath along the border with Louisiana are on other grids.
“Ensuring a reliable grid,” as ERCOT says in a published mission, includes managing the flow of electricity to more than 26 million customers, about 90 percent of Texas’ power load. That power flows from about 700 generation units, including wind turbines, natural gas- and coal-fired power plants, solar installations and even smaller generators used by industrial facilities. It’s distributed out over 46,500 miles of power lines.
ERCOT also acts as a financial middle-man for wholesale buyers and sellers in the system, collecting payments from power buyers and paying those that generate it.
While the organization isn’t a state entity, it receives policy direction and guidance from the Public Utility Commission and the Legislature. A board of directors includes representatives of electricity consumers, generators, retail power providers, utility companies and municipal utilities.