AUSTIN, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – Oncor Electric Delivery CEO Allen Nye began his testimony before the State Senate on Friday, February 26, as did the CEOs of other companies in the energy sector.
“I mean I completely understand the outrage and anger of all jeans.”
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Nye appeared during the second consecutive day of hearings at the Texas Capitol, in which the Senate Trade and Commerce Committee and the State House Affairs and Energy Committees investigated what led to the disruptions. widespread last week that caused millions of jeans to lose electricity, heat and water. for days.
Nye testified when the first winter storm broke out in Texas on the night of Feb. 15, the state’s grid operator, ERCOT, repeatedly ordered that they cut off power in addition to its customers to prevent a catastrophic shutdown.
“We were two / thousandths of 1% firing the last safety blanket this state has.”
Initially, he said his intention was to make continuous cuts, for 15 minutes, 30 minutes of rest.
But he said it was impossible because power plant operators remained offline and there was not enough supply to meet demand.
“The generation was coming down so fast and they would tell us that she is about to return and we would stay up all night waiting for her and she will never show up. Or a little, and something else would fall. During these periods I could not estimate if the generation would return so that I could take it home. I had no idea. “
Nye said Oncor should have done a better job communicating with customers why many of them had to stay in the dark for so long.
He also told lawmakers why the lights were turned on by about 40 percent of his customers.
“If you live in a feeder that also goes to a hospital or if you live in a feeder that goes to a 911 call center, it won’t rotate either.”
This left about 50% of customers to deal with electrical outages.
In a moment of frankness, he said he didn’t realize his house was in a feeder until he woke up with the lights still on.
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It is not close to any critical infrastructure and so he said he called his company to tell them to cut off the power supply, which also affected his neighbors.
In all, Nye told lawmakers that about 1.3 million customers lost energy.
Most were because there were not enough power plants in operation.
Of these, he said about 140,000 customers were in the dark because Oncor’s power lines froze during the storms.
According to CBS 11, natural gas processors lost power in the field, making it impossible to deliver natural gas to power plants that need fuel to run.
Before House committees on Friday, Texas Railroad Commission chairman Christi Craddick, who oversees the gas industry, said ERCOT did not realize what was happening. “When I say ERCOT lacks communication, they didn’t understand that they needed a continuous flow of gas to be able to put gas in power plants.”
Nye said before the storm they had identified 35 gas installations that needed to continue receiving electricity.
But after the interruptions began, Nye said he received calls from many more. “During the event, we added 168 new critical facilities for gas. We activated them immediately and kept them going all the time. “
He told lawmakers that his company and other transmission owners, power plant operators and the gas industry need to develop an updated list.
Energy experts have told CBS 11 that comprehensive improvements need to be made to both the electricity and gas grid to avoid the kind of widespread shutdowns that happened last week.
On Thursday, the first day of hearings, Curt Morgan, CEO of Vistra Corporation of Irving, which operates power plants, told House Committees that unless the state has integrated and perfect gas and energy systems, the same problem will happen again.
Morgan recommended that a single authority oversee both systems, but this is not the case now.
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Although the Railroad Commission regulates the gas industry, ERCOT oversees the power grid and reports to the Texas Public Utility Commission.