Texas in Winter Turmoil

"We were woefully unprepared for this kind of cold."

"They [Ercot, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas] got caught with their pants down and now millions of Texans have no power."

"This is a matter of life and death."

Ron Reynolds, Texas State Representative

"This feels like a technical design failure."

"Everyone wants to blame someone, so they blame Ercot. But if the gas can't come out of the ground, is that Ercot's fault?"

"If we have sloppy building codes that don't properly insulate homes, is that Ercot's fault?"

Michael Webber, Webbr Energy Group, University of Texas at Austin

"I know it's frustrating we can't offer a time certain, but it's a process we're engaged in to get the grid back in balance." 

"[Texas’ electrical system was] seconds or minutes [from collapsing and plunging the state into the dark for months]."

"Our frequency went to a level that, if operators had not acted very rapidly … it could have very quickly changed."

Ercot chief executive officer Bill Magness

"We were looking at this week thinking, they are going to have to cut 10,000 megawatts of consumers."

"I really think Ercot is to blame on this one."

Adam Sinn, Aspire Commodities LLC, power and gas trader

"The financial incentive isn't there to harden that infrastructure."

"From a generator perspective, the only incentive is to bring energy to market as cheaply as possible."

Adrian Shelley, Texas office director, advocacy group Public Citizen

 

Texas wants its energy independence. It refuses to connect its power grid with neighbours, partly because it fears federal oversight and regulation would then ensue. It also has a  highly deregulated and competitive market lacking a long-term planning process other parts of the U.S. employ where in the east grid operators run capacity markets acting like insurance policies where generators are paid to guarantee their supplies will be available despite extreme hot or cold days. If they fail, they face stiff penalties.

Texas prefers leaving these critical issues up to prevailing prices and industry. Professor Webber has the opinion that a combination of upgrades and expansions nationally represent an overall requirement in ensuring energy needs are met at all times. And it won't come cheaply, given the cost in trillions of dollars spent over decades, about ten percent of which would take place in Texas which last saw a major test of its grid facing extreme cold a decade earlier.

 

Volunteers in South Padre Island, Tex., have rescued about 2,500 sea turtles who ran ashore to escape icy waters and are now being warmed at a convention centre.

 

This time the state was unable to meet the grid test; failures occurred in every conceivable corner of supply, due to a an extreme weather system that came down from the Arctic and settled comfortably over 17 central and western U.S. states. Nowhere else got caught out quite to the extent that Texas did, the irony being that Texas is the fount and supplier of so much U.S.energy. One of the large generators it is dependent on had put 4,000 megawatts off-line in four plants for maintenance, but the state failed to order those megawatts back into service.

The population was never put on notice that something like a total shut-down might occur. Ercot posted recommendations from its Twitter account that homeowners close their blinds, unplug unused kitchen appliances and: "Laundry on Valentine's Day? No!". Ercot senior director Dan Woodfin claimed the main factors assailing the power grid was frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and nuclear plants; Ercot officials claiming they had misplaced faith that generators had prepared for such cold.

 

A patient at St. David's South Austin Medical Center is prepared for transport. Earlier on Wednesday, hospital officials said some patients at the facility would be moved over to other hospitals in the area after the building began losing heat due to low water pressure. (Bronte Wittpenn/Austin American-Statesman/The Associated Press)

Its authority, however seems limited. The last time freezing weather caused rolling outages, in 2011, Ercot promulgated best practice instructions for power generators, yet was unable to enforce those instructions. A 357-page report was issued by federal energy regulators recommending generators winterize equipment; insulating pipes among those recommendations. A 100-megawatt wind farm was pointed out as a culprit with Tuesday's wind shutdowns. 

 

Last Thursday Energy Transfer LP warned its customers on the Transwestern natural gas pipeline that cold weather was approaching and they needed to know from their clients whether normally scheduled flows would face any deviation. Infrastructure connecting the Permian Basin in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico is exposed to the elements where drilling liquids freeze inside pipes forcing wells and gas processing plants shut.

 

"It's mentally draining, the constant thought of wondering, 'When will the power come back on, how can I get us out of this situation? It's been an uphill battle to stay warm", said Alton McCarver, 30, an IT worker, whose family from time to time cooped themselves into his Dodge Charger for the warmth of the heater, and to charge their telephones. First there was COVID, the lockdowns, the tension, then there was extreme and unusual cold followed by power outages, then followed by boil-water orders.

 

Donated water is distributed to residents in Houston on Thursday. Texas authorities have ordered millions of residents to boil tap water before drinking it, following record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and pipes. (David J. Phillip/The Associated Press)

"I think it’s a warning for the nation about the importance of considering the resilience of the electricity grid because it really shows how essential electricity has become in our lives."

"[Washington State’s energy grid has a strong Western Interconnection with the rest of the West Coast and Canada—unlike Texas]."

"Texas for political reasons decided to go its own way. Texas unlike the United States is not interconnected with other parts of the grid. They have very little possibilities of bringing power from the neighbors when they have a problem."

"So, that created a real problem for them because you’re on your own and you have a problem when you don’t have interconnection. You’re the sorry state."

University of Washington Power and Energy Systems Professor Daniel Kirschen

Extreme winter weather in Texas has delayed delivery of gasoline to some fuel stations in northern Texas, leaving drivers to scramble.