From Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian:
“WINTER STORM:
• This week, our grid failed us when temperatures reached historic lows and people needed electricity and heat the most.
• There were almost 4.5 million customers without power during the peak of the outage on February 16th. As of today, there are still close to 3 million Texans without power.
• The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, manages about 90% of the state's power for 26 million customers.
• ERCOT is overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature.
• ERCOT's recently elected chair and vice chair for the board of directors do not live in Texas and live in Michigan and California respectively.
• ERCOT said there were 45,000 megawatts offline. Of that, 15,000 megawatts were wind and 30,000 were gas and coal.
• On the morning of February 14th, ERCOT CEO Bill Magness warned: “We are experiencing record- breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas. At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units.”
• It is important to note that every natural gas plant online at the start of this crisis stayed online.
• While there have been some issues with natural gas production during this storm, much of that has to do with ERCOT cutting off power to well sites in West Texas. ERCOT assumed the state would have 67GW from thermal sources (gas & coal), but ended up only being able to get 43GW online.
• Many, including myself, have warned for years about the dangers of relying too heavily on unreliable, intermittent forms of electric generation like wind and solar to meet the energy needs for thirty-million Texans.
• This couldn’t have happened a decade ago when “coal-fired plants generated nearly 37 percent of the state’s electricity while wind provided about 6 percent. Since then, three Texas coal-fired plants have closed... In the same period, our energy consumption rose by 20 percent.”
• ERCOT was notified over a decade ago that Texas power plants had failed to adequately weatherize facilities to protect against cold weather. A federal report that summer recommended steps including installing heating elements around pipes and increasing the amount of reserve power available before storms.
• Instead of spending our resources making our grid more resilient, policy and spending has focused spending on mandating or subsidizing as much wind and solar as possible.
• The takeaway from this storm should not be the failure of fossil fuels, but the failure of leadership at ERCOT and the dangers of relying on intermittent, unreliable forms of energy like wind for a quarter of our energy needs.
• It shows as clear as day that the goal of 100% renewables by 2035 is a pipe dream that will increase suffering and harm Texas families.
• Had Texas been using 100% renewables, we would have had 100% blackouts.”
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
“WINTER STORM:
• This week, our grid failed us when temperatures reached historic lows and people needed electricity and heat the most.
• There were almost 4.5 million customers without power during the peak of the outage on February 16th. As of today, there are still close to 3 million Texans without power.
• The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, manages about 90% of the state's power for 26 million customers.
• ERCOT is overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature.
• ERCOT's recently elected chair and vice chair for the board of directors do not live in Texas and live in Michigan and California respectively.
• ERCOT said there were 45,000 megawatts offline. Of that, 15,000 megawatts were wind and 30,000 were gas and coal.
• On the morning of February 14th, ERCOT CEO Bill Magness warned: “We are experiencing record- breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas. At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units.”
• It is important to note that every natural gas plant online at the start of this crisis stayed online.
• While there have been some issues with natural gas production during this storm, much of that has to do with ERCOT cutting off power to well sites in West Texas. ERCOT assumed the state would have 67GW from thermal sources (gas & coal), but ended up only being able to get 43GW online.
• Many, including myself, have warned for years about the dangers of relying too heavily on unreliable, intermittent forms of electric generation like wind and solar to meet the energy needs for thirty-million Texans.
• This couldn’t have happened a decade ago when “coal-fired plants generated nearly 37 percent of the state’s electricity while wind provided about 6 percent. Since then, three Texas coal-fired plants have closed... In the same period, our energy consumption rose by 20 percent.”
• ERCOT was notified over a decade ago that Texas power plants had failed to adequately weatherize facilities to protect against cold weather. A federal report that summer recommended steps including installing heating elements around pipes and increasing the amount of reserve power available before storms.
• Instead of spending our resources making our grid more resilient, policy and spending has focused spending on mandating or subsidizing as much wind and solar as possible.
• The takeaway from this storm should not be the failure of fossil fuels, but the failure of leadership at ERCOT and the dangers of relying on intermittent, unreliable forms of energy like wind for a quarter of our energy needs.
• It shows as clear as day that the goal of 100% renewables by 2035 is a pipe dream that will increase suffering and harm Texas families.
• Had Texas been using 100% renewables, we would have had 100% blackouts.”
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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