Texas Privatized their Power Grid

[GMDino]

We all know Texas isn't big on regulations (think exploding chemical plants) but I didn't know that they had done this AND that they had been caught before and made no changes to make it better.

It's a good lesson in the old adage that "private companies can do it better" isn't always the case and that some government oversight is a damn better than people suffering because the big businesses want to make more money.

https://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/editorials/article249285685.html

Quote:[color=var(--tc,#222)]Texas knew for years power grid was at risk but did little about it. Unbelievable.[/color]

[color=var(--tc,#707070)]BY THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM EDITORIAL BOARD
[color=var(--tc,#707070)]FEBRUARY 16, 2021 02:34 PM[/color]
[/color]




[color=var(--tc,#222)]Once again, Texans are suffering because of a failure of disaster planning and investment to prepare for the worst.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]First, it was the pandemic. Texas’ public health infrastructure has been shown for a year to be lacking, at both local and state levels. Leaders tried to craft a plan in 2015 to prepare for the inevitable, but it was stopped over political issues.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]This time, it’s an unprecedented — but, importantly, not unpredictable — stretch of cold weather and storms blanketing the entire state. Public and private sector leaders may try to say there’s no way they could have been prepared for this. That’s a line of bull that no Texan should accept.[/color]

[color=var(--tc,#222)]After 2011’s epic winter storm — known around here as the one that ruined the Super Bowl in Arlington — agencies at all levels offered recommendations to address the very problems that contributed to this outage, too.[/color]
[color=var(--tc,#222)]There must be accountability. People must be fired. Companies must be fined and required to do better. Winterization of power plants must be a priority.[/color]

[color=var(--tc,#222)]The immediate focus, of course, is on getting power back up as quickly as possible. We’re in for days more of this, and lives are at stake. If more electricity can’t be generated, blackouts must be rotated to offer relief to Texans who’ve been without power for a day or more.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]Power companies and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, as every Texan now knows, have compounded the problem with miserably poor communication and broken promises. The promise of rotating outages flopped, and no one can explain why in plain English.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]Once the crisis is over, laws must change. A thorough investigation of both the public and private actors is necessary. Gov. Greg Abbott’s declaration that ERCOT reform is an emergency priority for the Legislature is a start, but only that. Generators must be required to do a better job of winter preparation, even if the state or consumers must ultimately help pay the bill.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]The failures here are spectacular and obvious. In November, ERCOT proudly announced that the state had sufficient energy supply for the winter. The excuse will likely be that no one could have predicted this storm. But it’s been evident for more than a week that a brutal cold was coming, and ERCOT officials were saying as late as Thursday that the system was ready. How can they have been so stupefyingly wrong?[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]But these cold snaps are not that rare. After the 2011 debacle, a thorough federal review found that parts of the Southwest have suffered these events at least every five years.[/color]

[color=var(--tc,#222)]Texas is an energy giant. This shouldn’t happen here. We have a large and diverse energy supply. The culprit here is a clear failure of preparation, period.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]The blame game is already falling into predictable narratives. On the right, the problem is too much reliance on renewable energy. On the left, it’s privatization, Republican leadership and a failure to anticipate the effects of climate change. There’s some truth in most of it, but the focus needs to be on specific actions that were not taken, who’s responsible for them and how to prevent them from happening again. Solve specific problems rather than railing at huge ones.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]It seems apparent that power generators haven’t done enough to winterize their plants, so shutdowns and failures kicked in just when the power was needed most. That extends to renewables, too, as wind turbines froze over. Natural gas transmission has been a problem as well.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]These are big, but fixable, problems. The Legislature must dig in to identify the specifics and then act accordingly. A law enacted in 2011 gave the Public Utility Commission power to require generators to report on their abnormal weather preparations and file an emergency plan. Has that been done, and if preparations were inadequate, why didn’t anyone step in? Perhaps regulators need more enforcement teeth. That’s always a tough sell in Texas, but it’s clear these companies need a nudge, and perhaps help paying the bills.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]It’ll be all too easy to forget this dreadful week when spring arrives. But it’s not just the occasional winter storm. Every summer, our power supply and grid are stressed by the extensive heat. We haven’t seen this level of failure yet during a summer, but it’s coming.[/color]


[color=var(--tc,#222)]When it does, Texans must be able to look back and see that everything possible was done to prepare. Lives depend on it.[/color]

More:

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2021/02/15/391519/why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/

Quote:Why Does Texas Have Its Own Power Grid?
Basically, Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with — you guessed it — the feds. But grid independence has been violated a few times over the years.
KATE GALBRAITH, TEXAS TRIBUNE
 | POSTED ONFEBRUARY 15, 2021, 6:46 PM (LAST UPDATED: FEBRUARY 16, 2021, 11:12 AM)

Graphic by ERCOT

This story was originally published by the Texas Tribune on Feb. 8, 2011.

Hey, Texplainer: Why does Texas have its own electric grid?

Texas’ secessionist inclinations do have one modern outlet: the electric grid. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection — and Texas.

The Texas grid is called ERCOT, and it is run by an agency of the same name — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT does not actually cover all of Texas. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas. This presumably has to do with the history of various utilities’ service territories and the remoteness of the non-ERCOT locations (for example the Panhandle is closer to Kansas than to Dallas, notes Kenneth Starcher of the Alternative Energy Institute in Canyon), but Texplainer is still figuring out the particulars on this.

The separation of the Texas grid from the rest of the country has its origins in the evolution of electric utilities early last century. In the decades after Thomas Edison turned on the country’s first power plant in Manhattan in 1882, small generating plants sprouted across Texas, bringing electric light to cities. Later, particularly during the first world war, utilities began to link themselves together. These ties, and the accompanying transmission network, grew further during the second world war, when several Texas utilities joined together to form the Texas Interconnected System, which allowed them to link to the big dams along Texas rivers and also send extra electricity to support the ramped-up factories aiding the war effort.

The Texas Interconnected System — which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities, one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas — had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. “Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal — more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s,” writes Richard D. Cudahy in a 1995 article, “The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection.” (Self-reliance was also made easier in Texas, especially in the early days, because the state has substantial coal, natural gas and oil resources of its own to fuel power plants.)

ERCOT was formed in 1970, in the wake of a major blackout in the Northeast in November 1965, and it was tasked with managing grid reliability in accordance with national standards. The agency assumed additional responsibilities following electric deregulation in Texas a decade ago. The ERCOT grid remains beyond the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which succeeded the Federal Power Commission and regulates interstate electric transmission.

Historically, the Texas grid’s independence has been violated a few times. Once was during World War II, when special provisions were made to link Texas to other grids, according to Cudahy. Another episode occurred in 1976 after a Texas utility, for reasons relating to its own regulatory needs, deliberately flipped a switch and sent power to Oklahoma for a few hours. This event, known as the “Midnight Connection,” set off a major legal battle that could have brought Texas under the jurisdiction of federal regulators, but it was ultimately resolved in favor of continued Texan independence.

Even today, ERCOT is also not completely isolated from other grids — as was evident last week when the state imported some power from Mexico during the rolling blackouts. ERCOT has three ties to Mexico and — as an outcome of the “Midnight Connection” battle — it also has two ties to the eastern U.S. grid, though they do not trigger federal regulation for ERCOT. All can move power commercially as well as be used in emergencies, according to ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark. A possible sixth interconnection project, in Rusk County, is being studied, and another ambitious proposal, called Tres Amigas, would link the three big U.S. grids together in New Mexico, though Texas’ top utility regulator has shown little enthusiasm for participating.

Bottom line: Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with the feds.

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