Federal regulators have opened an investigation into what caused the power outages across Texas. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) confirms that it will investigate together with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. FERC is the same agency that examined the last major winter power outage in Texas in 2011 and then offered recommendations to prevent them from happening again in the future.
On Wednesday, a group of North Texas congressmen sent a letter demanding answers to ERCOT, the agency that manages the state’s power grid. The letter asks what ERCOT did to prepare for this important storm?
Meanwhile, NBC 5 Investiga has uncovered new information showing that, less than a week before the storm, ERCOT officials said state power plants were ready to withstand the elements, raising more questions about how such a massive failure of the state’s energy system could occur.
During the storm, ERCOT said, 40% of state generators, four out of 10, went offline. These generators account for 46,000 megawatts of power, enough electricity to power approximately 9.2 million homes.
“I think it’s safe to say that weathering efforts have failed, that they haven’t been able to keep capacity online during this extreme weather,” said Jesse Jenkins, an energy expert at the University’s Center for Energy and Environment of Princeton.
Jenkins said key questions for researchers include what power plant operators did to protect equipment from the cold and what ERCOT did to make sure those plants were ready.
“And after the last calls closed and shut down in 2011, efforts were supposed to have been made to withstand the system against the cold. And it is clear that those efforts did not live up to the task,” Jenkins said. .
NBC 5 Investigates found records of ERCC meetings on the ERCC website, which showed that just five days before the storm arrived, ERCC CEO Bill Magness assured the group’s board of directors in a meeting: “We are ready for the cold weather.”
He said the agency had issued a warning to power plants to ensure they were properly wintered.
In September, ERCOT’s annual winter assessment, designed to ensure the state is ready, assured the public that there would be enough energy to meet this winter’s peak demand.
But then, when the bitter cold came, dozens of power plants went offline and endangered millions of jeans.
At a news conference Wednesday, NBC 5 Investigations asked ERCOT CEO Bill Magness about how he and his agency can be trusted after assuring the public that the state was ready.
Magness responded by saying, “The people in Texas who really need to trust us to get us out of this crisis are those operators who are working 24/7 shifts to make decisions that keep the system safe.“.
“Guilt can be assessed very soon,” Magness said, “guilt will surely be assessed.”
NBC5 Investigates also tried to reach out to Sally Talberg, the chair of ERCOT’s board of directors, which oversees the agency. Talberg did not return the call. An ERCOT spokesman also said there will be no board members available for interviews because their priority is to restore power right now.
ERCOT confirmed on Wednesday that it has no mandatory rules to require power plants to prepare for winter, but voluntary guidelines.
ERCOT says power generating companies have incentives to be prepared because they can’t make money if they aren’t able to make electricity.
A group representing power generators, Texas Competitive Power Advocates, issued a statement saying the power plants were overwintered and ready for the storm, but that the climate the state has seen has been unprecedented. .