Have Texas’ Power Problems Been Fixed?

Texans aren’t out of the woods yet when it comes to the energy crisis

By Robert Montoya at Texas Scorecard

Despite Gov. Greg Abbott signing legislation in response to the February blackouts, concerns have emerged about Texas’ power grid this summer. Texas Scorecard spoke with three of the state’s energy experts about the possibility of future blackouts, what the Texas Legislature should have done during the regular session, what they actually did, and what, if anything, Abbott should have them do in a special session.

Blackouts

Last week, Abbott signed legislation created in response to deadly blackouts during February’s severe winter weather. “Everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas,” Abbot stated.

This week, as Texas summer temperatures began arriving, ERCOT—the Electric Reliability Council of Texas that manages Texas’ power grid—announced power outages due to mechanical failures.

Texas Scorecard interviewed former State Rep. Jason Isaac and Brent Bennett of Life:Powered, and Bill Peacock, policy director at the Energy Alliance about Texas’ electricity issues. Both firms study Texas’ electrical grid and political policies that affect it and consumers. Bennett had pointed out ERCOT, before this, claimed there was a less than one percent chance of rolling outages this summer. After ERCOT’s alert, we asked about the possibility of blackouts this year.

“Our reliance on renewables has put us in a situation where relatively minor fluctuations in the weather or mechanical problems can put us at risk,” Peacock said. “We are at a higher risk of blackouts than we’ve ever been. But we don’t know what will happen until it does.”

“My opinion is that we’ll continue to have Conservation Alerts and will likely see rolling outages in August,” Isaac replied. “I’m seeing a trend that ERCOT is continuing to blame ‘planned outages’ rather than admitting we have a lack of reliable thermal generation because we’ve put too much emphasis on unreliable variable sources.”

Isaac was asked to define thermal dispatchable energy. “It is our natural gas, our clean coal, and our nuclear electricity that is really on demand,” he said. “It’s just readily available. It can be increased and decreased within minutes’ notice.”

“We’ve seen that good thermal dispatchable generation drop significantly over the last 10 years. It’s now only 66 percent of our grid,” Isaac explained. “Thirty-three percent is variable, it’s wind and solar, and then you’ve got about 1 percent that’s hydro.”

“Yesterday’s call for conservation is just a reminder of how precarious our situation has become because of our reliance on renewables,” Peacock added.

What the Legislature Should Have Done

Isaac and Peacock agree that during the regular session this year, the legislature should have ended subsidies for unreliable green energy.

“There’s a variety of reasons [wind and solar build in Texas]. Federal renewable energy subsidies drive investment all over the country, and they also build here because they have free transmission from West Texas,” Peacock said. “Another reason is because local property tax abatements.”

Read the rest at Texas Scorecard