Mixed messages raise concerns about the grid
In the two years since Winter Storm Uri plunged millions of Texas homes into darkness, Gov. Greg Abbott has leaned on a familiar refrain: legislative fixes have made the state’s power grid healthier than ever. Abbott spent serious political capital ramming these changes through the Legislature in 2021, then practically staked his entire reelection bid on avoiding a Uri repeat.
Then it was rather alarming to see Pablo Vegas, the man Abbott appointed to lead the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, take a wrecking ball recently to the narrative that Texas has plenty of power to weather the next winter storm.
Vegas, who took over ERCOT in October 2022, began this fall calling on owners of mothballed natural gas and coal plants to revive their dormant facilities to lower the likelihood of massive blackouts to less than
10%. Vegas made that desperate ask — which he later revoked when it failed to attract any interest — because ERCOT’s own projections, made public in November, showed an uncomfortably high 1-in-6 chance of a grid emergency if a major winter storm strikes Texas.
Then, at an event hosted by the U.S. Energy Association earlier this month, Vegas again warned that the state’s power grid is at a heightened risk of failing from extreme weather, citing the state’s lack of investment into developing transmission lines and natural gas pipelines to deliver energy to the grid when most needed.
“The reality is risk is increasing. We’re all seeing it,” Vegas told the audience. “If we do smart things with investments in resources, we can bring that risk down. But we need to make smart decisions.”
Yet several days later, speaking at a news conference alongside Abbott at the Houston headquarters for the power generation company Calpine, Vegas sang a markedly different tune. The event, a photo op unveiling the design of Calpine’s 425-megawatt natural gas plant — which the company had already announced in April — gave Vegas an opportunity to walk back his previous foreboding assessment, this time in the presence of his political benefactor.
“I want to … assure Texans that the power grid is as ready and reliable as it has ever been for the winter season,” he said. Abbott offered his own assurances, saying Calpine would not be opening a new plant in Texas if “they thought that the grid was not reliable.”
This dizzying spin is the last thing Texans want to hear as we approach what is typically our coldest stretch of the year. It reinforces the suspicion that our leaders are more concerned with self-preservation than leveling with Texans about our safety.
The result is such a deep level of mistrust that the winter solstice has become the new June 1 — a milestone date many Texans now have circled on their mental calendars as the unofficial starting point for weatherrelated anxiety. Except instead of breathlessly tracking tropical storm systems crossing the Atlantic, we now fret over “polar vortexes,” “bomb cyclones” and other apocalyptic terms meteorologists dream up to characterize hazardous cold weather.
It’s true, as the Chronicle’s business columnist Chris Tomlinson wrote recently, that this is not the same grid that failed two years ago. The Legislature passed weatherization requirements for gas plants, mapped out a critical supply chain and infrastructure network and required certain generators to have additional gas supply on site for emergencies. As long as crypto miners and industrial customers ramp down their considerable power usage when grid conditions get tight, we can hopefully avoid another disaster.
Yet it’s also clear that the state hasn’t done enough to account for the soaring power demand brought on by a population boom. Even the lowest-hanging fruit to improve grid reliability has failed to advance, such as basic measures to incentivize residential customers to weatherize their homes and install heat pumps or give them rebates for installing smart thermostats. Some studies estimate that such aggressive investments in energy efficiency in the next five years could free up enough energy to serve about 9 million Texas households. It’d sure be nice to have that kind of cushion heading into this winter.
For now, here’s a word to the wise for Texans: don’t depend on the men behind the curtain pulling the strings of the state’s power grid. We can’t count on them to put our interests first. Instead, prepare for the worst and hope it doesn’t come. Know where your water shutoff valves are. Insulate as many pipes as you can. Seal up any drafty windows or doors. Dust off your generator if you have one or invest in backup power batteries. And be sure to raise hell if you end up huddled in darkness on a cold winter’s night.
Abbott and ERCOT’s manager offer changing opinions