ERCOT asked the FBI to pause federal environmental limits during a winter storm

As last week’s historic winter storm rolled through Texas, officials from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, asked the federal government to temporarily suspend environmental limits for various energy producers.

The petition, signed by Bill Magness, CEO of ERCOT, asked the US Department of Energy to issue an emergency warrant and declare that there is “an electrical reliability emergency in the state of Texas that requires the intervention of the Secretary.”

The request was sent on Feb. 14 and asks Acting Secretary of Energy, David Huizenga, to allow certain power plants to operate at maximum levels and exceed federal limits for emissions and wastewater release until Feb. 19.

“This duration ensures that additional stock is available during a period when ERCOT may still face unprecedented cold weather, putting the generation out of service,” the emergency request said. “In ERCOT’s view, the loss of power to homes and local businesses in the areas affected by containment poses a much greater risk to public health and safety than the temporary violation of those permit limits.”

The request to the DOE notes that the storm “is expected to result in a record winter electricity demand that will surpass even ERCOT’s most extreme seasonal load forecast” and “this period will end as one of the most in Texas weather history. extreme events ever affect the state. “

The DOE granted ERCOT’s request at 7:41 p.m. CST on Feb. 14. ERCOT officials were unable to tell KPRC 2 at what time the request was made to DOE, but did send us a message to “All ERCOT Operators”, informing them of the DOE request at 5:58 PM CST .

You can read the full notice here.

The wording of the request has a very different tone from the public statements made by ERCOT officials three days earlier.

“At this point, we believe we have the tools to maintain a reliable system,” ERCOT spokesperson Leslie Sopko told KPRC 2 on Feb. 11.

While ERCOT released news on February 14 asking the public to conserve energy, several elected officials have criticized the organization for not raising the alarm anymore.

“If someone had told us ‘we’re in big trouble,’ we would have made completely different decisions,” said Galveston County Judge Mark Henry. “We would have opened warming centers, we would have given people a place to go.”

Henry said he had no idea ERCOT had this level of concern on Feb. 14. Even after the storm, Magness said he believes ERCOT had an accurate prediction and accurately predicted customer demand. Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s senior director of systems operations, said last week that 185 power plants were lost at the height of the storm.

“You knew it was bad, why didn’t you tell us?” Henry asked. “Why did you stick with the rolling blackout story?”

Henry said the county did not receive a call from ERCOT officials, but finally some information from energy providers, such as CenterPoint and Entergy.

“Nobody ever called us, we had to call them and ask ‘when does the rolling start? We have people sitting in the dark at 16 degrees for 24 hours now, ”said Henry.

Daniel Cohan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University, Ph.D. understands why ERCOT made the request and why DOE granted the request.

“I’m an environmental engineer, I never want plants to put out more pollution than they should, but everyone realized we were headed for a dangerous situation,” Cohan said.

Cohan said he disagrees that ERCOT officials adequately predicted customer demand during this storm.

“They planned a storm as strong as the 2011 freeze and we had a stronger one,” Cohan said. “Their original plan, or at least the one they published in November, is below predicted demand of 5-10 percent.”

ERCOT officials have said they have used the 2011 winter storm as a benchmark for preparation and forecasting. As KPRC 2 has reported, a more than 300-page report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation noted that winterization procedures at power generators “were either inadequate or not followed sufficiently.” filed with the Public Utilities Commission are voluntary at this time. force them to implement a specific type of plan.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, NERC, which has regulatory authority over power plants, will enact mandatory winterization regulations in November 2021.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was blunt in his assessment of ERCOT’s readiness for this storm.

“I believe ERCOT was not prepared, they told us they were ready, but clearly they weren’t,” said Patrick.

On Thursday, hearings of the Texas Senate and the House will meet to investigate the cause of these outages and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, has also launched an investigation into problems with the Texas power grid.

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