Texas’ power grid was “four minutes and 37 seconds from total collapse” during the recent historic winter storm, meaning the state could have been left in the dark for weeks, according to a report .
The startling revelation was made during an emergency meeting Wednesday of Texas Electric Reliability Council, a cooperative responsible for 90 percent of the state’s electricity, KHOU reported.
“It was a devastating event,” Bill Magness, CEO of ERCOT, said in his opening statements at the board meeting. “Power is essential to civilization.”
Officials said ERCOT lost 48.6 percent of its power generation during the height of outages, and if the fall had continued, the remaining generators would have started firing offline, which it would cause a possible system crash that would have required the so-called “black start”.
Magness doubled his claim that power outages were necessary to prevent a blackout in Texas, which is the only state that has its own autonomous power grid.
“If we have a system shutdown, the system is out of service indefinitely and it’s extraordinarily difficult to recover it,” he said, according to CBS Austin.
“We could be talking about when power will work again if we let the system reach that condition,” Magness added.
During the storm, 356 generators went offline, nearly doubling what Texas experienced during its last major winter storm of 2011, according to KHOU.
ERCOT officials said Wednesday that it has 13 units that have been contracted in the event of a blackout, but six of those experienced cuts last week.
During the meeting, officials discussed some of the measures ERCOT took to prepare for the weather, including the cancellation of transmission maintenance interruptions and the waiver of COVID-19 restrictions to incorporate workers. additional support measures, among other measures.
They also said an order from the Department of Energy allowed power generators to ignore some environmental regulations, which was very helpful.
ERCOT officials said natural gas plants failed more during the crisis, according to CBS Austin. Wind turbines also had problems, but sometimes they had excessive performance.
“There were a lot of issues related to the gas supply during this event,” Magness said. “What I like to highlight here is that the storm affected every type of generation.”
He added: “We regret that this event has taken time to resolve. What ERCOT wants to do today, what ERCOT wants to do in tomorrow’s legislative hearings and the future is to provide explanations, not excuses.”
On Tuesday, ERCOT announced in a notice to the Texas Public Utility Commission that four of its board members will resign Wednesday.
A fifth member submitted his resignation separately and the resignation of a sixth was announced.
Gov. Greg Abbott sent a statement saying he welcomes the resignations of members, who live outside the state.
“The state of Texas will continue to investigate ERCOT and uncover the full picture of what went wrong and make sure last week’s disastrous events never happen again,” Abbott’s statement said in part.