Update on Power Outages

Friends,

I wish I had better news to deliver but I fear we will not be back to normal power for a few more days. The hardships that Texans are enduring is completely unacceptable. Without a doubt, this crisis should have and could have been averted. The good news is when this does end, and it WILL, changes can and will be made to prevent large scale cold weather blackouts like this from occurring again.

More generation is coming online every few hours and we are getting closer to a more stable environment with scheduled outages but we aren’t there yet. Some improvements have already been made like Governor Abbott’s executive order requiring distributors selling natural gas to sell to Texas power generators and not send supply out of state so more generation can return online.

Texas’ electric power industry does a very good job preparing for and responding to other natural disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Texas actually has more natural disasters than any other state. But winter storms are a different matter.

Texas had a smaller but similar cold weather crisis in 2011. Then about 8,000 megawatts of power was lost and forced offline.(And we thought that was a crisis!) This time we lost about 45,000 megawatts which is over half of the total power available in Texas’ ERCOT power grid. Once these power plants shut down it created a cascade of secondary failures across the grid.
(ERCOT is the quasi-government organization that has, along with the Public Utility Commission, oversight of the generation, transmission and delivery of electricity.)

After the 2011 winter storm outage, the Legislature held hearings, passed legislation and we were assured the winterization problem was corrected. This wouldn’t happen again. Well, it’s Wednesday and power has been out at millions of homes since Sunday evening.

I sit on the Texas House State Affairs Committee and we will begin investigative hearings on this next week. I anticipate many days of hearings and workgroups. But when all the layers are peeled back, I suspect we will find three primary causes for the statewide blackouts:

1) Some power plants failed to winterize their water intake system thus shutting down the plant.
2) Other natural gas fired power plants failed to make sure they’d have sufficient natural gas available as fuel or their supplier was unable to deliver the fuel with the weather conditions. And,
3) There was unreasonable reliance on wind powered turbines and solar generation (that don’t perform reliably in cold/icing conditions or limited sun).

The frustrating thing is that these problems were not unforeseeable. In fact, much of this was revealed in 2011!

Most of the blame will lay with failed oversight by ERCOT and some also with the Public Utility Commission. We will no doubt find serious management deficiencies at ERCOT. But we may also find ERCOT and the PUC lack sufficient regulatory or enforcement authority. Winterization standards will have to be codified and strictly enforced. It will be the Legislature’s responsibility to make sure this type of cascade failure never happens again.

Please join me on the Mark Davis show, 660 AM, at 8:35 Friday morning to talk about these blackouts.

WARMING CENTERS

Wise County warming center is open at the Decatur Civic Center at 2010 W Business 380 Decatur.  For more information click HERE.  

Parker County

Hudson Oaks Site is now closed. 
Willow Park Christ Chapel in Willow Park Upper Level: 3906 IH-20 East Service Road Access Willow Park 76087. PETS IN CRATES ONLY. Hours of operation for this center are all day today thru 8AM Wednesday morning and a decision will be made to extend operations as needed. 
Weatherford WISD 9th Grade Center 1007 South Main Weatherford, TX 76086. Hours of operation for this center are NOON today thru 8AM Wednesday morning and a decision will be made to extend operations as needed. 
Azle The Church at Azle 1801 South Stewart Street Azle, TX 76020. PETS IN CRATES ONLY. Hours of operation for this center are NOON today thru 8AM Wednesday morning and a decision will be made to extend operations as needed. 
Springtown The First Baptist Church Springtown 500 N Main St, Springtown, TX 76082 Hours of operation for this center are all day today thru 8AM Thursday morning and a decision will be made to extend operations as needed. 
Springtown The Hilltop Church Springtown 1227 Old Cottondale Rd, Springtown, TX 76082. No Pets. Hours of operation for this center are all day today thru 8AM Thursday morning and a decision will be made to extend operations as needed.