Power outages plague Stephens County, statewide with power being gradually restored

As the state of Texas experienced severe freezing weather with snow this past week, residents also lost power through many parts of the state for days.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the flow of electrical power to 26 million Texans and represents about 90% of the state’s electrical load, called for rotating outages last Monday because the weather conditions caused energy providers across all types to go offline.

“There was an enormous amount of electric generation, that is the supply side that provides the power into the equation, that was taken out of service by the storm (…) not only taken out of service by things that occurred during the storm like freezing, things like that, but also it had impact on gas supply. So the ability of gas generators to produce particularly a full output was affected by the freezing impacts on the natural gas supply,” ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness said Wednesday during a media advisory. “So getting those resources back on the grid is the central solution to getting people their power back because we need to maintain a power balance and if that power balance has supply and demand too far out of balance, you risk cascading, catastrophic blackouts. Not an outage that we could store as soon as we get these power plants working again, but a blackout that would affect the entire ERCOT region and would have an indeterminate end date and would not offer the opportunity to serve critical loads.” Magness said last Wednesday

ERCOT had to reduce the demand to get the supply and demand back in balance to operate the system reliably and safely moving forward, which caused the outages to stay for longer. Some outages both in Stephens County and statewide continued for over 48 hours.

“The horrible consequences of what has happened with that are obvious. Very cold times. Some of the coldest weather we have seen in Texas and people not having power is dangerous. The essential nature of this service is very obvious when we have issues like this and we are working around the clock, working with those generators in particular, to get more of the power back on the system so we can achieve that balance and operate safely without any of those outages,” Magness said Wednesday.

ERCOT said it began to restore power on Monday with approximately 2,500 megawatts (MW) of electrical load being restored, or enough to serve 500,000 households and said controlled outage were likely to last throughout the evening and into Wednesday.

“ERCOT and Texas electric companies have been able to restore service to hundreds of thousands of households today, but we know there are many people who are still waiting,” Magness said Monday. “It’s also important to remember that severe weather, mainly frigid temperatures, is expected to continue, so we’re not out of the woods.”

The city of Breckenridge had many locations which were out of power for all of Monday, Tuesday and most of Wednesday, including larger stores like Walmart and United Supermarkets. ERCOT gave an update two days later on Wednesday stating they were continuing to restore power as safe and quick as possible. The release stated they were able to restore approximately 3,500 MW of electrical load, or enough to serve 700,000 households.

“We know millions of people are suffering,” Magness said Wednesday. “We have no other priority than getting them electricity. No other priority.”

ERCOT said in a press conference that the demand on Sunday could not meet the supply the state had available due to all other sources of electric producers being halted by the weather. They later stated in the press release Wednesday that more power will be available as more generators come online.

“The ability to restore more power is contingent on more generation coming back online,” ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin said Wednesday. “Since the winter storm began on Monday, approximately 185 generating units have tripped offline for one reason or another. Some factors include frozen wind turbines, limited gas supplies, low gas pressure and frozen instrumentation.”

ERCOT instructed local utility providers to shed 14,000 MW of electrical load, which is around 2.8 million households, with approximately 46,000 MW of generation being forced off the system during the winter weather event. Of that 46,000 MW, 28,000 MW was thermal and 18,000 MW was wind and solar, with 185 generating units tripping offline as of Wednesday.

“We are working around the clock to restore power to Texans,” Magness said Wednesday. “We made progress today, but it will not be good enough until every person has their power back.”

ERCOT stated at the end of Wednesday that they were able to restore approximately 8,000 MW, or enough to serve 1.6 million households, with sufficient generation available to begin restoring 1,000 MW every hour.

“We’re at a point in the restoration where we’re going to keep energizing circuits as fast as we safely can until we run out of available generation,” Woodfin said Wednesday. “We hope to make significant progress overnight.”

One question which was proposed to ERCOT during the press advisories was why the winterization of these systems was a not a mandate for the generators.

“ERCOT is the traffic cop on the grid. We are the air traffic controller, controlling the flow of the electricity. We don’t own the generation units, we don’t own the transmission, we’re really just managing the overall transmission system. Dispatching and putting generators on and off the grid,” Magness said Thursday. “Winterization is going to need to be an effort thats undertaken by those entities that own the physical assets out in the field. So to ask when will we winterize, its really the owners of those assets that need to look at winterization and best practices and to determine what are they going to do to prevent those issues like we saw the last few days. We’re willing to work and help and make sure that those are effective. We’re happy to work with anyone in the industry, but it’s really not our role to do winterization.”

Gov. Greg Abbott provided an update on Wednesday regarding the power outages and said there still remained around 10,000 MW off the power grid in Texas, with additional power generation from coal and other sources to add additional power generation into Thursday. He stated there were still troubles with sources of generation including mechanical difficulties, gas supply issues and the effects of the winter weather.

“The Governor has ordered natural gas producers not to export product out of state until February 21st and instead sell it to providers within Texas. The Governor also noted that he has been working closely with the White House to provide additional resources for Texans and expand the supply of the energy in the state. The Texas Railroad Commission has worked closely with the Public Utility Commission, Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and other state and local agencies to ensure that electricity and gas can swiftly be provided across the state,” Gov. Abbott’s office wrote in a release Wednesday.

ERCOT announced Thursday morning that they had made significant progress restoring customer power overnight, with some outages still remaining. They reiterated that emergency conditions still remain as grid operators and transmission owners worked to restore the remaining power.

“We’re to the point in the load restoration where we are allowing transmission owners to bring back any load they can related to this load shed event,” Woodfin said. “We will keep working around the clock until every single customer has their power back on.”

ERCOT said as of Thursday there was still a little over 40,000 MW of generations which remained on forced outage due to the weather. Of that 40,000 MW, 23,500 MW was thermal generation with the rest being wind and solar. They stated Thursday that some rolling outages may be need over the next few days to keep the grid stable.

After calling rolling outages Monday, ONCOR stated on their outage map Thursday that as a result of increased generation and stable demand they were advised to cease rotating outages. They said the remaining outages were a result of damage from the winter storm Wednesday, previous weather, storm damage which could not be identified until equipment was reactivated and damage to electrical equipment caused by the low temperatures.

Gov. Abbott announced Tuesday that ERCOT would be added as an emergency item for reform during this ongoing 87th Legislative Session and an investigation be held for the organization.

“The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours,” Gov. Abbott said Tuesday. “Far too many Texans are without power and heat for their homes as our state faces freezing temperatures and severe winter weather. This is unacceptable. Reviewing the preparations and decisions by ERCOT is an emergency item so we can get a full picture of what caused this problem and find longterm solutions. I thank my partners in the House and Senate for acting quickly on this challenge, and I will work with them to enhance Texas’ electric grid and ensure that our state never experiences power outages like this again.”

Along with the state looking into the power outages, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the transmission and wholesale of electricity and natural gas, announced Tuesday that along with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation they will be inquiring with other federal agencies, states, regional entities and utilities to identify the problems with the power systems.

“For now, the emphasis must remain on restoring power to customers and securing the reliability of the bulk-power system. In the days ahead, FERC and NERC will formally begin the inquiry, which will work with other federal agencies, states, regional entities and utilities to identify problems with the performance of the bulk-power system and, where appropriate, solutions for addressing those issues,” FERC wrote in a press release Tuesday.