Texas’ power grid is in the national spotlight amid a deadly winter storm that left 2.7 million homes without power as of Wednesday morning.
The power grid that typically brings electricity to homes and businesses is stuck under the cold temperatures, leading to unexpected power outages.
Amidst the chaos, here are five important things to know about the state’s power grid.
It is almost completely isolated from other grids
There are three major energy networks in the continental United States: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection.
The first two grids supply power to large parts of the country, while the Texas grid supplies power exclusively to the Lone Star State. That also means that Texas receives very little of its power outside of state lines.
“There are only a few gigawatts of what we call DC connections to the other parts of the grid,” said Carey King, assistant director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute.
Wade Schauer, research director for electricity and renewables in America at Wood Mackenzie, an energy research and consulting firm, told The Hill that in networks elsewhere in the country “there have been quite significant transfers of power during the current crisis”.
“There is not really the possibility to import a lot of power into the ERCOT grid,” said Schauer, referring to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the nonprofit that manages the grid’s power supply.
Only a few parts of Texas are outside the ERCOT system.
Local news broadcasts have reported that the city of El Paso, where power is supplied by the Western Interconnect, has been largely spared the power outages in other parts of the state.
“If those residents have experienced essentially the same weather and they haven’t had so many power cuts, that would be good information to understand the potential vulnerability of the ERCOT grid,” said King.
It is subject to less federal regulation
Because the Texas grid only conducts business within the state, it is not subject to oversight from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a government agency that regulates inter-state transmission.
That makes Texas an outlier when it comes to FERC rules.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry
Rick Perry OVERNIGHT ENERGY: Five Things You Should Know About Texas’s Tense Power Grid | Biden honeymoon with green groups is facing tests | Electric Vehicles Stand By To Help Biden In Climate Battle Five Things To Know About Texas’s Strained Power Grid Rick Perry: ‘Texans Would Be Out Of Electricity Longer’ To ‘Keep The Federal Government Out’ MORE (R), who served as Secretary of Energy during the Trump administration, suggested this week that it’s a worthwhile trade-off, even with the current power outage in freezing temperatures.
He said Texans would be “without electricity for more than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” even though the blog post where he made the comment, said the comment was made “in part rhetorically.”
Wood Mackenzie’s Schauer noted that markets in other states have mechanisms to ensure that companies generating electricity are able to meet demand during peak times such as extreme weather.
“Other markets have performance fines and things that require generators to be available for a certain amount of time on peak days in winter, and that’s not really a feature of the ERCOT market,” he said.
The grille is largely ill-equipped to handle low temperatures
Many facilities in Texas do not have the same type of insulation as states further north.
Wind turbines are not winter-ready like those in the north of the US, while machines for other energy sources are not as well insulated, making water absorption a problem in cold temperatures.
Making those upgrades can come at a significant cost.
“It’s a matter of how much you invest to protect the grid from something very unlikely. And this kind of cold snap in Texas would be very unlikely, but here we are, ”said Thomas Overbye, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M University at College Station.
Varun Rai, director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute, said more needs to be done to ensure the state is prepared for these types of storms. Equipment needs to be kept warm, regular maintenance is needed to protect against falling trees, and houses need to be well insulated, he said.
“Events like this are actually a routine event every year in those parts of the country,” Rai said, referring to the Northeast and Midwest. “It is quite possible to keep a network in operation on a very large scale.”
Relying on natural gas fueled the energy shortage
Natural gas is the largest source of energy in Texas, accounting for 40 percent of the state’s energy.
But in a region ill-prepared for single-digit temperatures, that power supply stalled in an unfortunate cycle.
Natural gas producers need electricity to run their compressors, but electrical systems were under pressure from cold weather and a lack of natural gas.
“Another thing that this event has yielded is how dependent our electrical and natural gas systems are. We get most of our electricity from natural gas, and we need electricity to run the natural gas systems, and they are both very pressured by cold weather, ”Daniel Cohan, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston , The Hill said earlier.
“You have the two systems that need each other to work and both are dealing with a surge in demand and a loss of supply,” he said. “This is really a story about how vulnerable systems can be when they are so dependent on natural gas in extreme weather conditions.”
Other fuel sources have struggled in the cold weather as well, with some wind turbines covered in ice due to a lack of protection common in other parts of the country.
Yet the renewable source had a much less difficult time than natural gas.
Wind power production fell 1 gigawatt below the 6 gigawatt officials said would be needed to meet winter demand, while electricity from coal, natural gas and nuclear power dropped 30 gigawatts below the more than 60 gigawatts they expected to deliver.
Some critics, especially Republicans, have tried to blame the power outage on renewable energy.
“Our wind and our solar power have been turned off,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Fox News. That put Texas in a situation where it had no statewide power. … It just goes to show that fossil fuel is needed. “
His comments sparked backlash given the significance of the contribution of other fuel sources to Texas’s predicament.
“I’m going offline for a few days and returning to a GOP government accusing policies that it didn’t even implement for its own failures,” Rep. Tweeted. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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The state had winter outages in 1989 and 2011
This isn’t the first time Texas has faced rolling blackouts.
The 1989 blackouts came amid a December cold snap, while the 2011 blackouts occurred in the first week of February, when winds and unusually low temperatures hit Texas and neighboring New Mexico.
In total, about 1.3 million electrical customers were out of service The 2011 event peaked on February 2, and a total of 4.4 million were hit from February 2 to February 4.
In a report following the 2011 blackouts, FERC and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation recommended steps including stepping up winterization measures.
The report The above mentioned electricity producers operating within the ERCOT system “had not been able to prepare adequately for winter”, citing inadequate insulation and failure to train operators and maintenance personnel in winter preparations.
Rai said it’s not clear exactly how many recommendations from that report were passed, but this week’s results indicate that more needs to be done.
“If those recommendations were implemented on a full scale and with strict enforcement and taken seriously … you would still see some outages,” he said.
But it’s about how massive and deep the failure has been. If those recommendations were taken seriously and more proactive work had been done … we wouldn’t have gone without 34 gigawatts of power a few days ago, ”he added. “If you look at the result, there was a lot that seemed to have remained on the table.”