At-a-Glance:

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas released a 60-point roadmap outlining how the grid operator plans to ensure the state’s power grid is more reliable, following the catastrophic blackouts last winter that almost shut down the region’s entire electric system. A report released by he University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute analyzes what went wrong,  finding the outages that plagued Texas last winter were caused by multiple failures across the gas and electric systems, including, in part, fuel shortages, outages at critical fuel facilities and non-weatherized power plants. To learn more, read “ERCOT releases plan to boost reliability after blackouts, as report outlines gas, electric failures.”

Key Takeaways:

  • The Texas legislature passed comprehensive legislation intended to overhaul the state’s power grid and strengthen reliability.
    • Two of the bills, signed into law, will require power companies to weatherize their power plants and transmission lines, and require ERCOT’s board to be appointed by state legislators.
  • UT’s report found the “failure” of the natural gas and electric system during the February winter storm “had no single cause.”
    • All generation technologies — gas, coal and nuclear plants, as well as solar and wind facilities — failed in some capacity as a result of the storm.
  • ERCOT’s most extreme winter scenario underestimated demand by about 9,600 MW, or 14%, the report found, while weather models inaccurately predicted the timing and severity of the storm.
  • Several generating units were not weatherized properly, the report found, in part leading to these issues.

Path to 100% Perspective: 

February’s arctic cold wave caused widespread blackouts in Texas because many power plants were not designed for extreme ambient temperatures, which caused them to become inoperable during the below freezing temperatures. Winterizing gas supply and power plants is required to avoid another blackout scenario. Although it is more expensive to winterize the gas supply and power plants, it is necessary to offer reliability. On the open electricity markets, plant investors struggle to see the point of winterizing for extreme conditions that may not happen. Indeed, it is going to be more expensive to engineer power plants to expand the temperature range down from 15 degrees fahrenheit to 0 degrees fahrenheit, but the critical need for power during these conditions would make the investment prudent.