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University of Texas: Power Grid Crisis Partially Man-Made

A new report from the university's Energy Institute and research faculty, ordered by the Texas Public Utility Commission, details the ways in which policies, supply-chain issues and unaccounted mistakes led to disaster.

Texas power grid fail.jpg
Terri Mitchell, who lives in the Homestead in Bee Cave, has been bundled up in the living room with her husband without power or running water. Her house is 47 degrees. Luckily, she has a wood stove to use as a fire place.
Contributed photo/Austin American-Statesman
(TNS) — A new report out from University of Texas spotlights the failings of Texas' power grid during the deadly February freeze and gives new details on how human-caused fuel supply chain woes exacerbated the power crisis.

The Texas Public Utility Commission, the agency that oversees the operators of Texas' power grid, commissioned the report, which researchers said was designed to serve as a baseline of the facts and events contributing to the grid's problems during the winter storms.

Researchers said they found 67 facilities in power plants' fuel supply chain that had their power shut off because they were part of a program known as Emergency Response Service. The program led to electric utilities and service providers cutting off power to critical infrastructure because those facilities had not identified themselves as a needed part of the supply chain.

The Houston Chronicle first reported the paperwork failure the led to fuel disruptions. The new UT report provides further details into the extent and scope of that fuel supply chain breakdown.

For instance, researchers said some of those facilities might have been compensated for having their power shut off. However, the amount of compensation as well as the names of the affected facilities were not provided to researchers because those contracts are between power companies and private customers. They remain shielded from open records law, despite those payments amounting to money passed through to those facilities from the grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is commonly known as ERCOT.

The report also found that a large majority of natural gas plants and other thermal power generators that failed during the February freeze experienced failures at temperatures that were well above what those power plants had identified as their minimum operating temperature. That raises questions as to how power plant operators rate their ability to function in subfreezing temperatures, said Carey W. King, assistant director of UT's Energy Institute.

"The temperature data does sort of bring up the question of how do you actually verify the temperature resilience of a power plant from an engineering, technical standpoint," King said.

Among the conclusions was that ERCOT failed to understand the gravity of the storm until shortly before it hit. Weather forecasts conflicted with ERCOT's forecasts by as many as 10 degrees.

"It just didn't seem like that they really had a handle on how bad the storm was going to be until kind of right before the event," said Josh D. Rhodes, a research associate in UT's Department of Mechanical Engineering.

The UT report comes as ERCOT on Tuesday released its own report, titled "Roadmap to Improving Grid Reliability." The report includes a 60-point plan to improve the grid, and ERCOT says it has already achieved 20 of those action items.

The completed items include requiring power plant owners to publicly identify facilities that are not working and to provide more frequent updates on operations.

Jay Zarnikau, a research fellow at UT's economics department and co-author of the UT study, said the ERCOT plan appeared to be a positive step forward.

"I was really impressed by the roadmap. I thought it was a pretty good document," Zarnikau said. "Whether it really covers everything the governor has expressed a desire to do, I'm not sure"

Last week Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Public Utility Committee to address grid resiliency by creating unspecified incentive programs to encourage the construction and maintenance of new and existing fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. Abbott also told the committee to start charging renewable energy producers, such as wind and solar plants, reliability fees.

Also Tuesday, utility commission officials told members of the Texas Senate Committee on Business and Commerce that it has the authority to enact Abbott's demands without the need for further legislation.

It became clear during the hearing that much work remains in what amounts to a complete overhaul of Texas' energy-only market. As commissioners relayed to senators, Texas' energy market continues to incentivize keeping the state on the brink of an energy crises, as opposed to improving reliability.

Public Utility Commission Chairman Peter Lake called the ERCOT market a "crisis-based business model."

"The way the market is designed, there's only a financial reward the closer you get to crisis, which is obviously not good for our consumers," Lake said.

Texans were reminded of the thin margin between reliable energy and a crisis last month when ERCOT issued conservation calls amid plummeting wind power production, an inordinate amount of forced outages at natural gas plants and a large number of plants down for maintenance.

Commissioner Will McAdams said the June event painted a picture of an aged fleet of power plants. He said most dispatchable power plants were built between 1995 and 2007. As those plants have gotten older, their need for maintenance has grown.

"We need to focus on maintenance as well," McAdams said.

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