The real story behind the Texas power outages

The blackouts were actually years in the making.

By Ula Chrobak February 18, 2021

A burst of Arctic air unleashed extreme winter weather on the central and southern
US this week, and Texans were hit particularly hard.

More than four million in the state were left without power in rotating blackouts
conducted by the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas
(ERCOT). Starting Sunday, many have had to cope with no light or heat while the
temperatures hit historic lows for this time of year, dipping to 0ºF in some parts of the
state.

Some have quickly pointed fingers towards who might be responsible for the
catastrophe. After the grid operator mentioned that frozen wind turbines were among
the energy sources affected by the icy conditions, some conservative politicians
seized on that detail to take aim at renewables, including by sharing an image of a
helicopter de-icing a turbine blade that was actually taken in Sweden from 2014.
Even setting aside the fact that modern wind turbines can come equipped with de-
icing systems and operate just fine in frigid Midwestern winters, it turned out that
most of the power systems that went offline in Texas were fossil fuel-based.

The real story behind the blackouts is complex. Right now, here’s what we know: this
historic freeze caused a demand in power that far outstripped what the state’s grid
operator had planned for—even beyond that of its “extreme peak load” scenario—
while at the same time winter weather halted a substantial amount of power
production. “Electricity demand is astronomically above projected levels,” says
Patrick Milligan, an energy power market expert with the consulting firm ICF. “This
forecast error was 45 percent—it was huge.” (Milligan noted that, as of Thursday
afternoon, the forecast error has been updated to 30 percent).
If the grid were able to provide it, it’s estimated the demand from Texans would have
been about 70 gigawatts, says Daniel Cohan, an atmospheric scientist at Rice
University. But with more than 30 gigawatts down as a result of the storm, the grid
could only supply 45 gigawatts.

If unmanaged, the surge in demand could have brought the entire grid down, says
Milligan. So grid operators instituted a series of rolling blackouts to tamp down on
demand. These blackouts have been stretching on for hours and sometimes even
days, exposing thousands of people to deadly cold. At time of writing, the cold snap
has claimed at least 21 lives and blackouts continue across the state.

Wind turbines and power plants are both capable of operating in cold temperatures.
There are wind farms in Minnesota and Iowa, after all. But running energy facilities in
icy conditions often requires weathering treatments. That’s an extra cost, and
something power suppliers in Texas probably didn’t anticipate needing with the
region’s normally mild winters.

The largest chunk of the power that went offline was natural gas-based (natural gas
supplies the largest portion of the state’s energy). Milligan says that this is likely the
result of some combination of weather shutting facilities down as well as gas
shortages. When temperatures drop, natural gas is used both directly for furnaces
and indirectly to combust and turn into electricity. That means demand was
especially high right when producers were slowing down.

The catastrophic cold could have take-aways for the policy and infrastructure of the
Texas energy system, which is unique in a couple ways.

For one, Texas has a deregulated energy market. That means that there are
numerous independent utilities, all competing for their share of the market. The
system gives consumers flexibility in choosing where their energy comes and what
they pay, but it can also challenge long-term energy planning. Milligan notes that
ERCOT, the grid operator, can’t force more capacity to come online—it can adjust
only monetary incentives. “It works very well, in theory,” he says. “The issue is that
when there’s problems like this [storm], they have no way to force the utilities to build
more power plants.”

Other utility systems in the States aren’t much better at planning for extreme events,
though. Much of the rest of the country relies on state-regulated monopolies for their
utilities, and these investor-owned companies are also slow to take proactive
measures to protect their facilities from weather extremes. PG&E in California, for
example, has neglected basic maintenance that could have prevented massive
wildfires.

“In all my studies and my discussions with utilities, I have found that there is a false
sense of security,” says Sayanti Mukherjee, an energy resilience researcher at the
University of Buffalo. Those managing our grid and power supply are, by and large,
not preparing for the extreme weather events that will become more common with
climate change. Mukherjee says that most utilities don’t incorporate climate
resilience into their plans. “It’s time that climate resilience is put into practice and
more attention given to this sort of planning.”

Texas is also unique in that its power grid is largely separate from the rest of the
country. The state generates its own power and for the most part doesn’t trade
energy across state lines. In a very Texas move, grid managers designed the system
to avoid crossing state lines—if it did, the grid would have been subject to the
jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Going it alone has mostly
worked out for Texans, since the state has rich energy serves, both of the
hydrocarbon variety in the Permian Basin as well as abundant wind and sunshine.

It’s possible being connected to a national grid would have helped Texas. But,
Cohan cautions, the cold weather system that pummeled the Lone Star State was
widespread, and also stressed the grids of neighboring states like Oklahoma. Nearby
states might not have had much power left over even if they could share. However,
parts of Texas outside the ERCOT grid apparently did not experience widespread
blackouts. “The whole system was stressed around the US,” says Milligan. But, he
adds, it still would have helped if Texas were connected to the greater US grid.
It’s been an unprecedented cold snap, and it’s still too early to know how to distribute
the blame. In the coming weeks, though, it may become more clear how state
officials’ and utilities’ ability—or inability—to plan for extreme scenarios played a role.

https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/texas-power-outages/