AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Electric Reliability Commission of Texas, which controls about 90% of the state’s power flow, says it’s making key operational changes to prevent another February mass outage incident.
In a Monday letter to Governor Greg Abbott, ERCOT Interim President and CEO Brad Jones explained several changes he says ERCOT has made. The statements come one week after Abbott sent a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas to take immediate action in changing ERCOT’s operations.
ERCOT has been under statewide and national scrutiny since February’s historic winter storm, when mass outages left millions of Texans in the dark and cold for days under single digit temperatures. ERCOT’s handling — or mishandling — drew national contempt and is widely considered a failure. This incident resulted in resignations from several board members and the termination of President and CEO Bill Magness.
About 151 people died from storm-related conditions, the Texas Department of State Health Services reports, although it’s important to note that auto collisions and other factors also contributed to that number.
Now, ERCOT says it’s made and continuing to make changes ordered by Abbott.
Changes include:
- Taking a more proactive/aggressive approach to ensure adequate generation supply can meet customer demand
- An increase in the amount of generation that’s running at any given time
- A significant purchase of more reserves compared to last year
- Releasing reserves to meet customer demand quicker
- Acquiring more reserves when there’s an uncertain weather forecast
- Launched a resource outage report that meets PUC requirement to post the cause of unplanned generation outages within three working days
- Implementing new protocols to provide price certainty during emergency conditions
- Working closely with PUC to identify opportunities to address needs quickly
- Launching a new ERCOT homepage that shows understandable and clear information for the public
- Planning to completely makeover the ERCOT website by year’s end
“These strategies, combined with the enhanced enforcement tools provided by the Texas Legislature, will ensure greater stability and reliability of the Texas electric grid,” Abbott said Monday. “I work every week with the PUC and ERCOT to ensure that Texans have the reliable electric power they expect and deserve.”
In June, Abbott signed two bills into law that will change the number of ERCOT board members, give state leaders more say in new appointments, and will also require power providers on the ERCOT grid to weatherize equipment and communicate further about outages.
But the Governor hasn’t escaped criticism for the February outages, either. Despite the newly passed legislation, Abbott’s been accused of not doing enough soon enough.
After saying that “everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas,” some said he was downplaying critical problems with ERCOT.
In an eerily reminiscent June announcement, ERCOT released a conservation alert that lasted several days — before summer, and peak heat, had officially even started.
“To see it happening while temperatures are a little bit lower than they normally are is a bit concerning, but given how many power plants are offline, it makes sense,” Joshua Rhodes, University of Texas at Austin research associate, told KXAN. “But I mean it’s something we’ve got to figure out. If anything we know, the summer’s only going to get hotter.”
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