AUSTIN, Texas — Editor's note: The video published above is a KVUE Defenders investigation into what has been done since the deadly winter storm in 2021.
February 15 marks the first anniversary of the deadly 2021 winter blackouts that killed hundreds of Texans and left more than half of the state without power or water service.
Nearly one year later, Advanced Power Alliance hosted a panel of energy experts to discuss missed opportunities, mistakes and positive changes that have marked Texas’ response to the historic blackouts.
Speakers of the panel included:
- Doug Lewin (Moderator): energy consultant and president of Stoic Energy, LLC.
- Virginia Palacios: executive director, Commission Shift
- Joshua D. Rhodes, Ph.D.: research associate at The University of Texas at Austin and founding partner of IdeaSmiths LLC
- Alison Silverstein: former Texas PUC and FERC Senior Advisor; energy consultant, author & strategist
Watch the full conversation here:
Rhodes called the February 2021 winter storm a "climate, energy, water, health, financial and housing crisis" that snowballed together. All 254 counties in Texas were under a Winter Storm Watch at the same time, which had never happened before, Rhodes said. Rhodes spoke on record energy demand combined with record low energy supply.
"The same winter weather that came in and increased our demand also took off a lot of our power plants," Rhodes said.
Natural gas supply was down nearly 85% on Feb. 15, 2021, compared to the week prior, Rhodes said.
Silverstein said the state grid is in better shape in 2022 than it was in 2021, but said its performance during the 2022 winter event did not prove whether or not the issues have truly been fixed.
"Last week was a relatively mild event compared to what happened a year ago with Winter Storm Uri and it was not enough of a stress test to really show that the grid is better," Silverstein said. "The grid is better, but it probably could not have survived another Uri."
Palacios corroborated Silverstein's claim that the "gas supply chain is not ready for another extreme winter storm like Winter Storm Uri."
Silverstein pointed to the following improvements: winterization of power plants, modifications to energy market prices made by the Public Utility Commission (PUC), change in the shape of the operating reserves demand curve pricing, limits on the applicability of energy prices under emergency conditions and limits on ancillary service pricing. She also mentioned that ERCOT has made a number of operational readiness changes that include bringing many more generators on standby.
However, Silverstein pointed out several opportunities that have been missed or "flat-out failures" since the 2021 winter storm. She said the natural gas system has not been winterized, noting it as single biggest issue during the 2021 winter storm other than the weather itself. She then pointed out a few areas she claims the PUC and ERCOT have not addressed since the storm.
"The commission has not even begun considering the role of demand in causing the magnitude of the failures here, and how we address that by expanding energy efficiency for Texas residential and small commercial customers in particular," Silverstein said. "The commission has not, nor has ERCOT done much to expand structural demand response in terms of who can provide it, how much we can get and how to use customer resources aggregated to create dispatchable resources, like virtual power plants that we can use to increase resource adequacy and flexibility."
Palacios pointed to a Houston Chronicle investigation regarding the Railroad Commission's (agency that oversees oil and gas development and gas utility service) claim that 98% of facilities are winterized. According to the report, inspection notes of these facilities did not match the Railroad Commission's conclusions, Palacios said.
The report states that the Railroad Commission has not indicated how many of these 22,000 inspected wells are part of the well population that are critical to supply in Texas residential and electricity gas fields. Palacios also said the report found that the Railroad Commission didn't physically inspect the majority of these sites that they said were inspected, insinuating that they were paper inspections. For a closer look at the Houston Chronicle investigation, click here.
"So the point that I want to make is that natural gas is not reliable if we don't have a reliable oversight agency," Palacios said.
Silverstein said the PUC has not conducted any "detailed analysis of the reliability and cost implications" of any of the reliability options that they have considered to date or are talking about moving forward in the coming year. And she finished her points stating ERCOT has not yet performed any sophisticated analysis of the short-term and long-term resource, operational or adequacy needs.
"And how do we operate a grid with changing energy ... changing extreme weather threats, average temperatures rising and a variety of different resource conditions? This means that we're operating a really different grid in really different circumstances, and we need to understand much better what that requires in terms of operational tools," Silverstein said.
The KVUE Defenders also did a deep dive into what has and hasn't been accomplished since the deadly storm. Lawmakers told two state agencies to fix the grid. One made changes while the other dragged its feet. We found it left us with only patchwork. Read more about the KVUE Defenders investigation here.
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