Abbott, state leaders set sights on ERCOT
As millions of Texans experience continued power outages amid extreme winter weather, Gov. Greg Abbott is declaring the reform of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas as an emergency item for the Legislature.
“The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours,” Abbott said in a Tuesday release. “Far too many Texans are without power and heat for their homes as our state faces freezing temperatures and severe winter weather. This is unacceptable.”
The designation means the Legislature can now act on the issue almost immediately upon return to Austin. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have expressed outrage at the agency over the past two days, calling for an immediate investigation and changes to ensure this week’s widespread blackouts are the last.
“Reviewing the preparations and decisions by ERCOT is an emergency item so we can get a full picture of what caused this problem and find long-term solutions,” Abbott said.
Later Tuesday, in an interview on Houston’s ABC13, Abbott blasted ERCOT’s response as a “total failure” and said the agency’s top leaders should resign.
“ERCOT has not been transparent,” Abbott said. “They’re not providing information to either you, to the public in Houston or even to the governor of Texas that (explains) why they’re incapable of accelerating the process of equitably distributing energy power across the state of Texas.”
Both chambers of the Legislature plan to probe the issue, which left about 4 million customers without electricity. Earlier Tuesday, Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont called on the House’s state affairs and energy resources committees to hold a joint hearing on Feb. 25 to review the outages.
“We must cut through the finger-pointing and hear directly from stakeholders about the factors that contributed to generation staying down at a time when families needed it most, what our state can do to correct these issues, and what steps regulators and grid operators are taking to safeguard our electric grid,” Phelan said in a news release.
Criticism all around
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the leader of the state Senate, said the chamber’s business and commerce committee will also set up hearings on the subject.
“I share the frustration of every Texan regarding the loss of power during this winter storm,” he said in a statement. “Millions of people without power during this arctic blast is lifethreatening and unacceptable. We must get to the bottom of this to be sure we are better prepared even if an unprecedented weather event happens again.”
In the meantime, criticism both of the agency and of Texas’ top lawmakers has continued to pour in on social media, where Texans have recounted hours — and, in some cases, more than a day — of dropping temperatures in dark homes. Overnight, thousands of Texans fled to nearby hotels, where rooms filled up and prices skyrocketed.
“What we’re witnessing in real time is what happens when state leaders spend years focused on bathrooms and Chick-fil-A rather than actual issues of state governance like infrastructure and energy,” said
Democrat Mike Collier, who ran against Patrick in 2018 and was an adviser to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. “Texas needs real, honest leadership now.”
ERCOT has been posting about its services on Twitter, noting Tuesday that local utilities are restoring power to 400,000 households across the state. Additional power sources should become available throughout the day and help restore electricity elsewhere, the agency said.
“The number of controlled outages we have to do remains high,” said Dan Woodfin, the agency’s senior director of system operations. “We are optimistic that we will be able to reduce the number throughout the day.”
The questions that lawmakers now ask will be informed by 2011, the last time the state saw blackouts that even remotely compared to those experienced this week.
Inadequacies
That year, federal energy authorities recommended a host of changes to the state’s power grid operations, including increasing the amount of reserve power on hand in the lead-up to severe storms; requiring power plant and transmission line operators to provide winterization plans; and conducting regular audits of cold-weather capabilities.
“The task force found a number of inadequacies in generating units’ preparations for winter performance,” the report stated. “These included a lack of accountability and senior management review, lack of an adequate inspection and maintenance program, and failure to perform engineering analyses to determine the correct capability needed for their protection equipment.”
But the federal authorities recognized that implementing changes would be difficult in the state’s deregulated system, where weather preparations are profit-driven.
“While pre-operational warming has considerable value, issues of whether or how generators are to be compensated for taking such actions at ERCOT’s direction would need to be addressed,” they said.
State Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who was on a Tuesday call with ERCOT representatives, said the state had not taken previous warnings seriously enough, failing to prepare for this week’s frigid weather.
“The wind turbine stuff I get, because look, it’s prohibitively expensive to winterize wind turbines for what would have been a one in 100 or one in 500 chance of happening,” he said. “But nuclear power plants not having defrosters on their water? The coal- and gas-powered plants not having heating elements on their gas distribution devices? Those things are like, come on, we should have taken care of that.”