Decades of Republican misrule, refusal to spend on infrastructure, and a once-in-a-century winter storm exposed Texas's power grid for the unsustainable sham that it is, the only power grid not under federal jurisdiction, by the way, and as a direct result, as many as four million were left without power in the freezing cold on Monday into Tuesday.
Millions of Texans were without heat and electricity Monday as snow, ice and frigid temperatures caused a catastrophic failure of the state’s power grid.
The Texas power grid, powered largely by wind and natural gas, is relatively well equipped to handle the state’s hot and humid summers when demand for power soars. But unlike blistering summers, the severe winter weather delivered a crippling blow to power production, cutting supplies as the falling temperatures increased demand.
Natural gas shortages and frozen wind turbines were already curtailing power output when the Arctic blast began knocking generators offline early Monday morning.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which is responsible for scheduling power and ensuring the reliability of the electrical network, declared a statewide power generation shortfall emergency and asked electricity delivery companies to reduce load through controlled outages.
More than 4 million customers were without power in Texas, including 1.4 million in the Houston area, the worst power crisis in the state in a decade. The forced outages are expected to last at least through part of Tuesday, the state grid manager said.
CenterPoint Energy, the regulated utility that delivers electricity to Houston-area homes and provides natural gas service, started rolling blackouts in the Houston region at the order of state power regulators. It said customers experiencing outages should be prepared to be without power at least through Monday.
“How long is it going to be? I don’t know the answer,” said Kenny Mercado, executive vice president at the Houston utility. “The generators are doing everything they can to get back on. But their work takes time and I don’t know how long it will take. But for us to move forward, we have got to get generation back onto the grid. That is our primary need.”
Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of system operations, said the rolling blackouts are taking more power offline for longer periods than ever before. An estimated 34,000 megawatts of power generation — more than a third of the system’s total generating capacity — had been knocked offline by the extreme winter weather amid soaring demand as residents crank up heating systems.
The U.S. Energy Department, in response to an ERCOT request, issued an order late Monday authorizing power plants throughout the state to run at maximum output levels, even if it results in exceeding pollution limits.
Ed Hirs, an energy fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, blamed the failures on the state’s deregulated power system, which doesn’t provide power generators with the returns needed to invest in maintaining and improving power plants.
“The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union,” said Hirs. “It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.
Texas's power grid broke in the same fashion in 2011 during a February blizzard, and the state did nothing to prepare for the next time. Well, the next time came this week, and it was a catatrophic power grid failure as a result.
Like most red states, Texas cut corporate taxes to attract businesses, but didn't have the money to fix basic infrastructure. Part of that tax scheme was ERCOT, the Texas power authority, that did everything it could to make the problem worse.
But the major issue was the state relying on natural gas for both heat and power in the winter, so much so that the demand so badly outstripped supply that it shut the state's power grid down completely. And let's not forget as climate change causes more weather extremes at both ends like record-breaking heat and cold, power demand will only increase.
Republicans are blaming "failed green energy" but the fact of the matter is it's gas, coal, and nuclear that failed in Texas.
Main story continues to be the failure of thermal power plants -- natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants -- which ERCOT counts on to be there when needed. They've failed. Of about 70,000 MW of thermal plants in ERCOT, ~25-30,000 MW have been out since Sunday night. Huge problem.
— JesseJenkins (@JesseJenkins) February 16, 2021
Some 35-40% of Texas's total traditional power generation was knocked out by cold weather. Green energy isn't the problem, it's a power grid specifically designed to be as inefficient as possible because nobody wants to invest in power infrastructure, period.
The utter refusal of states to invest in infrastructure nationally is going to kill us.
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