Schaumberg 1

Lucas Schaumberg
Dr. Sarah Read
WR 532
5 March 2022

​Stopping Power: Examining the rhetorics and ethics in the 2021

Texas electrical grid shutdown

INTRODUCTION

Before the sunrise of Feb. 15, ERCOT, the state power grid operator of Texas, announced

record-breaking electric demand for the start of 2021, resulting from a week that never saw

temperatures rise above 15 degrees. For almost a half a month, the entire state had been hit by a

cold wave that kept temperatures about 20 degrees below average1. The week-long snap and

ensuing electricity demand was too much for the state grid to handle. The sun came up, but the

lights stayed off. Texans had gone to bed with the power still on, but didn’t know they’d wake

up to houses and apartments without heat or light.

ERCOT assumed the frigid weather was over for the year, but temperatures had dropped

again in the late winter – down to almost 9 degrees in Mid-February. A ‘crisis event’ was

forecast, so ERCOT, the heavily deregulated organization supplying Texas’s power and whose

shoddily maintained infrastructure has a tendency to crash, was planning to shut off electricity to

nearly 4.5 million people in an attempt to avoid a week— or even month long— crash.

1
The 2021 cold-snap, which affected the entire southwest, was severe enough to warrant the creation of a wikipedia page.
 Schaumberg 2

Blame for the loss of life and power followed. Claims that the state’s use of green energy

sources caused the blackouts circulated on television and social media. Governor Greg Abbot, in

a particularly piquant claim, singled out wind energy, claiming that renewables had “thrust Texas

into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.”

Still, the blame for the crisis away from what appears as the root cause: record cold

temperatures that affected generation and transportation across all fuel types (including, but not

limited to, wind energy), combined with the inability of the state’s independent and isolated

electricity grid (operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT) to source

supplies from elsewhere.

Investigations into ERCOT electrical grid layout, as well as the company's structural

design, followed shortly after the power came back. One of the more incisive attempts came

from the U.S. House subcommittee on Energy & Commerce, which deposed the CEO of ERCOT

for his role in leaving millions without electricity. Of particular interest is their request for

information, sent via letter, detailing the seven specific questions where the government wanted

concrete, technical answers. A week later, President of ERCOT, Bill Magness, complied, sending

back his answers in a publicly released document.

This document is of great interest to any technical writer. Answers from Mr. Magness

tries to deal with as many of the exigent needs of the situation-- the need to apologize, the need

to relay information, the need to cover his own ass-- as possible. What’s particularly striking is

that he’s able to do so, presenting the news as a sort of technical fait accompli using a highly

specialized language in a highly technical situation. It’s very likely that some anonymous
 Schaumberg 3

technical writer on retainer must have provided him with the language and information to

credibly relay the inner workings of ERCOT. Given how dexterously Mr. Magness avoids any

language that could reflect blame back on the company, this writer probably provided a crash

course in damage control as well. It’s notable how well the first task of this writer– giving the

CEO the technical information is hidden within the later– treating that information with the

rhetorical coating needed to withstand deposition.

METHODOLOGY

I want to examine exactly what work that role required and what was rhetorically

accomplished, extracting the rhetorical positioning from the base facts . In this paper, I’ll run a

rhetorical and ethical analysis on the 5 (of the 7) relevant answers that Mr. Magness provided

during ERCOT’s congressional attestation, with particular focus on the efficacy of technical

language and writing in the genre of a deposition. Facilitating this analysis are five texts:

“Rhetoric of Layoff Memos”, “Honesty May Be the Best Policy, But It Often Comes at a Price”,

“Between Efficiency and Politics,”2 “Genre as Social Action3”, and “Who Killed Rex?”. I

believe these writings, which tend to come out of an ethics or rhetoric framework, work to

provide a satisfying illumination into the mechanics of the situation.

A brief note on the efficacy of both frameworks: As rhetoricians point out, the rhetorical

framework is frequently misunderstood as nothing more than the “manipulation of a text's

linguistic features”4, and has been associated with fraud or upkeep of institutional power

2
Ornatowski, Cezar M. "Between efficiency and politics rhetoric and ethics in technical writing." Technical
Communication Quarterly 1.1 (1992): 91-103.
3
Miller, Carolyn R. "Genre as social action." Quarterly journal of speech 70.2 (1984): 151-167.
4
Covino, William, and David Jolliffe. “What Is Rhetoric?” Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Ed.
William Covino and David Jolliffe. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1995. 3–26. Print.
 Schaumberg 4

structures. In this context, studying rhetoric entails examining how people are duped, with

rhetoric being defined as the polar opposite of truth. While this is not the entirety of what the

rhetoric framework does, it still can work to investigate how biases and motives are inscribed

into a text– in this case a depositional one.

There’s a similar qualification I want to make on the applications of an ethical

framework. It is unrealistic to assume that the framework can determine how a particular

individual in a particular situation is motivated primarily by a particular ethical ethical

perspective. The potential influence of ethics (or lack of it) on an individual's communication

behaviors is what I’ll focus on here. The framework will then allow us to find the ethically

treacherous points– or points where ethics can be avoided altogether– inside an analyzed text.

In running ERCOT’s deposition through the two frameworks, I’ll provide a general

summary of each answer (including rhetorical and ethical analysis) and will pull quotes for

analysis. This section will use close reading analysis, as recommended by the 2010 essay

“Rhetoric of Layoff Memos”. As Jasinski (2001) explains, “Close readers linger over words,

verbal images, elements of style, sentences, argument patterns, and entire paragraphs and larger

discursive units within the text to explore their significance on multiple levels” (p. 93)5 CTA is

an ideal method for those starting with the textual artifact itself. CTA rewards fine-grain analysis

of the given statements, “slow[ing] down the action within the text” through multiple careful

readings.

5
King, Cynthia. "Introduction to the rhetoric of layoff memos." Business Communication Quarterly 73.3 (2010):
320-322.
 Schaumberg 5

ANALYSIS

“What protocols did ERCOT have in place to notify the public of the extreme weather

event and associated power disruptions? Please explain in detail and describe any methods

and technologies used to communicate with the public and the effectiveness of these

systems.”6

Mr. Magness, speaking for ERCOT, provides a brief description here of the networks for news

dispersal that ERCOT operates with, including mentions of the company website, Facebook

page and Twitter account. Also mentioned is the role that news agencies play in relaying

information, including general emergency alerts.7

For this answer, Bill Magnus, who acted as the spokesperson for ERCOT8 lists off the

procedures in place for “Crisis Communications Procedure”. The efficacy of these procedures is

in question, as most of the notifications to the public are provided through updates to the ERCOT

website or postings on ERCOT’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, which would assume the

audience is already subscribing to the official accounts, or even has internet access in the first

place. ERCOT cleverly gets around this fact by giving dates that note the amount of people who

visited the website during or after the power outages, not before. To accomplish this, a rhetorical

pose of uncertainty is struck. “Gauging the effectiveness of ERCOT’s communications presents

some difficulty”, writes CEO Bill Magnus, “because it is unclear how many people viewed or

6
All bolded text in this section are direct questions taken from the U.S. House subcommittee during the Energy &
Commerce’s May 14, 2021 deposition. A direct transcript is provided at the end of the essay.
7
All italic text in this section are brief transcriptions of ERCOT’s answers, summarized to the best of my ability
8
He never makes any personally identifying remarks during his responses, a lack of specificity which might have
helped the CEO avoid direct culpability. It didn’t work– Bill Magnus stepped down as acting CEO within the year.
 Schaumberg 6

heard these messages, and of those, how many changed their behavior because of them.” This

sentence directly contradicts the final one– which mentions that ERCOT believes that much of

the confusion can be attributed to a lack of understanding of ERCOT’s role. By noting that the

electric power industry and the operation of the ERCOT wholesale market might be too complex

for the audience to understand, the responsibility for clear communication during the panic is

subtly shifted away from the sender–ERCOT– to the receiver.

The answer details an event from Thursday, February 11, 2021, at 2:11 p.m.—almost four

days before load curtailment began—ERCOT mentioned that it was "expecting record electric

use" due to "extreme cold temperatures," which were expected to be "the coldest weather we've

experienced in decades." The notice goes on to mention that ERCOT was "collaborating with

transmission operators to minimize possible transmission outages that could reduce generation

availability or otherwise impact the system's ability to serve demand." Speculation about how

much ERCOT knew about the potential for massive failure is out of the range of the essay. Still,

any admission about the chances of blackout would have been a smart rhetorical policy—

scholars Allen and Voss mention in “Ethics in Technical Communication” that open admission of

possible flaws or side effects before testing is the most effective move to reduce possible

blowback.9 Given the recency of the 2011 mass-blackouts, the rhetoric calculation happening

here should have weighed a full disclosure– including what ERCOT knew about the chances of

blackouts— over a more competitive answer. This complete disclosure would have made

available all available information with the intent of informing both congress and the general

public, regardless of whether it resulted in significant reforms to ERCOT.

9
Sanders, Scott. "Ethics in Technical Communication: Shades of Gray." Technical Communication 45.3 (1998):
411-413.
 Schaumberg 7

Instead, the unwieldy sentences work to shift some of any possibility of future blame

away from ERCOT. Notice how the language shifts agency solely from ERCOT to the

“transmission operators” in a “collaboration”, which ignores the top-down structure that ERCOT

oversees.

On February 14, the morning of the blackouts, ERCOT sent a message half the length of

the previous memo. “Grid operator requests energy conservation for system reliability.” It

mentioned that ERCOT had experienced “higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen

wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units.” Again, the efficacy

of this is suspect– ERCOT relies on the internet to release this information.

ERCOT, in one of the last messages sent out to the Texas public, writes that “severe

weather, mainly frigid temperatures, is expected to continue, so we’re not out of the woods.”

Notice the complete change of tone here, from the technical writing towards the casual register.

The language of authority is vacated here as soon as it becomes clear that ERCOT might have

the authority to prevent blackouts. Notice the use of the communal “we” deployed here– ERCOT

considering itself as part of the general public instead of an agency that should provide to them.
 Schaumberg 8

Please explain whether increased connection with the Eastern and Western

Interconnections in the United States would have allowed Texas to import more power to

alleviate the electricity shortages experienced within the State.

Mr. Magness goes into a brief hypothetical about the efficacy of an larger interconnected grid,

ultimately concluding that it wouldn’t have helped for the specific situation. The answer ends,--

in a rather conditictory note– on the future plans to connect the Texas electrical grid with that of

the southern United States.

The answer given here exemplifies the rhetoric maneuvers needed to avoid culpability

during a deposition– notice the three qualifiers in the admission that it is “at least theoretically

possible” that additional transmission connections between the ERCOT Interconnection and the

Eastern or Western Interconnections may have allowed for some additional power imports to the

ERCOT grid during at least some of the disaster.

A key sentence: “For at least the earlier part of the week of February 15-19, the

Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regions

both experienced operator-directed load curtailment events of their own due to cold-weather

generation impacts, with SPP issuing its first-ever curtailment directive.” Notice the use of

highly technicalized terms and jargon (the sentence is almost composed of it in entirety) as an

obscurant. You can imagine how this would be received by anyone who isn’t a seasoned grid

operator, which most members of Congress aren’t. The semantic need for clarity is at odds with
 Schaumberg 9

the desired outcome from ERCOT, which is to avoid any statements that would lead to

regulation. Clear communication is not the goal here.

Out of all the questions asked by Congress, this is probably the most leading. ERCOT is

expected here not only to explain the confounding choices behind the layout of the power grid,

but to relay the results of those choices in a gesture of full disclosure. The refusal to do so is a

key rhetorical choice. What’s provided before us is a good example of bad technical writing, and

an even better example of good rhetorical maneuvering.

Please explain if scarcity pricing worked as intended during this extreme weather event.

Please also explain why, in many cases, generators were physically unable to provide power,

but customers ended up with utility bills in the thousands of dollars.

Mr. Magness begins by explaining the scarcity pricing mechanisms illustrated as the cause

behind the high utility bills. Discussed is the economic structure of ERCOT, which relies on

“competitive markets” to distribute and price-value the electricity.

This is another question where the obvious ethical violation is covered in obscurant

language. Notice how the highly specialized language is implemented in a way that removes the

part of the ERCOT’s electricity provision where the power is actually provided to the consumer.

“The overall purposes of the scarcity pricing mechanism are to provide strong financial

incentives for performance by generators and for price-responsive demand by load. During the

February 2021 event, there were strong financial incentives for generation to be online and

remain online through emergency conditions.” This is an illustrative example about how rhetoric
 Schaumberg 10

that neglects any concern for the human actors (in this case, dropping the power customers

entirely) risks casting a dim sociopathic light. This is particularly true if there’s been a failure to

provide on the consumer end. What’s given is a specious, self-containing answer that only works

after removing human actors from the equation, showing a complete lack of consideration for

any questions a layperson who purchases power from ERCOT’s might have. Again, reading over

this answer, the consumer never seems to come in at any part of ERCOT’s distributing process.

While technical jargon and elliptic language worked to avoid hard answers in previous questions,

the pointedness second of the question makes ERCOT’s weaseling explicit.

Looking over this response, a reader might get the (probably correct) sense that ERCOT’s

main purpose for power grids is to create profits or “strong financial incentives”-- a technical

euphemism for creating a larger profit margin–with electricity produced for consumers merely as

a side effect. A more acceptable rhetorical maneuver is given at the end of the periphrastic

statement, where the president mentions that “Customers who had opted for those much riskier

service offerings did report extremely high bills during the February event. The PUCT and the

Legislature are considering measures that may restrict those competitive offerings in the future,

based on outcomes affecting customers who exposed themselves to wholesale power price risk

during the February event.” This is another example of technical language slyly moving the

accountability towards the consumer. Effectively, the agency for the decision is given to the

consumer who purchased electricity from the second vendor wholesale. The surprise here is that

ERCOT didn’t labor on the technical aspects of wholesale electricity purchase risks to congress

to further distract from the ethical egregiousness. Ethically, ERCOT appears to have been

negligent in failing to recognize that the billing portion of the network had also failed.
 Schaumberg 11

Additionally, ERCOT might have gestured at a plan to compensate customers for services not

provided or for bills charged during the catastrophe. The poor choice in ethical approach limits

the rhetorical options.

Are there any existing protocols in place to ensure communication regarding natural

gas/electric supply coordination, particularly among ERCOT, the Texas Railroad

Commission, and the Texas Public Utility Commission? In your response, describe how

regularly ERCOT communicated with these entities leading up to and during this event,

the type of information shared, and your review of the effectiveness of these

communications efforts.

Mr. Magness goes into a brief hypothetical about the efficacy of an larger interconnected grid,

ultimately concluding that it wouldn’t have helped for the specific situation. The answer ends,--

in a rather conditictory note– on the future plans to connect the Texas electrical grid with that of

the southern United States.

The response to this question again neglects the agency of anyone at ERCOT to actually

affect the outcomes. Note the language that goes around any mention of people or Texas citizens.

This is reminiscent of the language of layoff memo’s— C King points out that this genre

“….uses headcount instead of people or employees noting that the company is “targeting

non-headcount expenses wherever possible.” Much like these memos, which often utilize

obscurant language, at no point does the answer use clear, concrete language to give the

audience what they’d actually want. There’s no clear description of the scope of the breakdown
 Schaumberg 12

that would allow blame to be placed. Obviously, this is strategic on ERCOT’s behalf—- they

want to avoid regulations—-but it’s worth considering how little ERCOT actually positions

themselves as having control. The blackout is framed here as an event that had almost been

decided upon before ERCOT and the individuals who are impacted were actually informed,

leaving them with little choice but to accept it.

5. Please provide a detailed description of the reliability framework in Texas, including but

not limited to the roles of NERC, ERCOT, the Texas Reliability Entity, the Texas Public

Utility Commission, and the Texas Railroad Commission. In your response, please also

explain which entities have the authority to develop, implement, and enforce mandatory

reliability standards in Texas, including for natural gas infrastructure.

Mr. Magness provides a description of the network of companies and actors that regulate

ERCOT electricity, noting that none of the listed agencies have authority to develop, implement,

or enforce reliability standards for natural gas infrastructure, though they occasionally help in

the actual provision of electricity.

Rhetorically, ERCOT doesn’t have to make a great effort into making the network of

companies and actors that create the electric grid seem complex and impenetrable. This answer

calls to mind theorist Clay Spinuzzi’s Who Killed Rex10, itself based on a Network Control

Center of a regional telecommunications company in West Texas. Much like the Spinuzzi’s

example, if a consumer of ERCOT electricity isn't a resale customer, the organization powering

their fridge and lights works through a collaborative effort amongst providers. Locally, providers

10
Spinuzzi, Clay. "Who killed Rex? Tracing a message through three kinds of networks." Communicative practices
in workplaces and the professions: Cultural perspectives on the regulation of discourse and organizations (2007):
45-66.
 Schaumberg 13

connect to one another's equipment and networks; long-distance providers constantly lease space

to one another and compete for that space. Instead of a singular physical network, (for which

ERCOT might take culpability for) what exists is a slew of interconnected, overlapping, splicing

networks managed by a variety of companies. Again, the usual semantic need for clarity–in this

case about how power grids interconnect and overlap– is at odds with the desired outcome from

ERCOT, which is to avoid congressional or economic regulation. The correct identification of

responsibility that could come with a plain-language style is not the rhetorical goal here.

FURTHER ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS

When undergoing a deposition, the first question may be "what happened?" but the more

important question, the question whose answer offers some hope of understanding the examined

events, is “why did this happen, and who caused it?” There’s a vested interest for the deposed

party—if it is culpable enough for an official investigation to occur—to rhetorically maneuver

any statement that might answer the latter question into statements that deal with the former. If

this is impossible, then the deposed, when answering the question of “who caused it?” should try

to rhetorically affirm that it wasn’t them or their organization. The genre goal for ERCOT is to

create a situation where wrongdoing doesn’t imply blameworthiness.

Despite the technical language deployed here, this is a principally classical rhetorical

situation, one “…where a speaker or writer sees a need to change reality and sees that the change

may be effected through rhetorical discourse.” We can distinguish the primary audience for this

text– the congressional elect– from various subsidiary audiences— which probably include the
 Schaumberg 14

general public. One might assume that ERCOT might want to provoke some deep ideological,

emotional, or psychological condition that must be changed within the auditors before they can

accept the agency's ideas around culpability. This approach, however, seems to be neglected.

Instead, the role of a technical writer for this exigent situation was to give Mr. Magnus answers

the appearance of addressing the concerns of both audiences in some way, all while shifting

agency for the event away from the organization. This was done by rhetorically positioning the

collapse of the grid as an act of God, something that was irreversible before it actually happened.

For whatever ethical harm ERCOT might have done, Magnus claims, they only acted as agents

in an ill-conceived, ill-omened system. A technical writer was hired to illustrate those systems

while portraying ERCOT as without agency within them.

There’s an additional role the writer played. As Nystrand reminds us11, a discourse

community comprises people who “may very well never speak or write to each other,” but who

could effectively so interact if required since they know the ways-of-speaking of the group” (15;

emphasis in original). Technical language serves a specific rhetorical purpose here, which is to

prevent as much possibility for effective interaction as possible, accomplished by bringing

technical writer’s jargon, specialized speech, and a non-humanistic focus into any answer where

a regulatory committee would seek a discourse centered on disclosure. As always, we should

remind ourselves that the question asked by the rhetor Cicerio– cui bono or “who benefits?” is

best understood as both rhetorical and ethical. It’s the skeleton key to navigating the rhetorics of

a deposition.

11
Nystrand, Martin. "A social-interactive model of writing." Written communication 6.1 (1989): 66-85.
 Schaumberg 15

CITATIONS

All citations are included in the footnotes. Provided is a link to the official congressional
transcript.

Lucas Schaumberg
Dr. Sarah Read
WR 532
March 5, 2022

​ topping Power: Examining the rhetorics and ethics in the 2021 Texas electrical grid
S
shutdown

INTRODUCTION

Before the sunrise of February 15, ERCOT, Texas's state power grid operator, announced
record-breaking electric demand for the start of 2021, resulting from a week that never saw
temperatures rise above 15 degrees. For almost half a month, the entire state had been hit by a
cold wave that kept temperatures about 20 degrees below average. The week-long cold snap
and ensuing electricity demand were too much for the state grid to handle. The sun came up,
but the lights stayed off. Texans had gone to bed with the power still on but didn't know they'd
wake up to houses and apartments without heat or light.

ERCOT assumed the frigid weather was over for the year, but temperatures had dropped again
in the late winter – down to almost 9 degrees in Mid-February. A 'crisis event' was forecast, so
ERCOT, the heavily deregulated organization supplying Texas's power and whose shoddily
maintained infrastructure tends to crash, was planning to shut off electricity to nearly 4.5 million
people in an attempt to avoid a week— or even month-long— crash.
Blame for the loss of life and power followed. Claims that the state's use of green energy
sources caused the blackouts circulated on television and social media. In a particularly piquant
claim, Governor Greg Abbot singled out wind energy, claiming that renewables had "thrust
Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis."
Still, the blame for the crisis away from what appears as the root cause: record cold
temperatures that affected generation and transportation across all fuel types (including, but not
 Schaumberg 16

limited to, wind energy), combined with the inability of the state's independent and isolated
electricity grid (operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT) to source
supplies from elsewhere.
Investigations into ERCOT electrical grid layout and the company's structural design followed
shortly after the power came back on. One of the more incisive attempts came from the U.S.
House subcommittee on Energy & Commerce, which deposed the CEO of ERCOT for his role in
leaving millions without electricity. Of particular interest is their request for information, sent via
letter, detailing the seven specific questions where the government wanted concrete, technical
answers. A week later, President of ERCOT, Bill Magness, complied, sending back his answers
in a publicly released document.
This document is of great interest to any technical writer. Answers from Mr. Magness try to deal
with as many of the exigent needs of the situation-- the need to apologize, the need to relay
information, the need to cover his own ass-- as possible. What is particularly striking is that he's
able to present the news as a sort of technical fait accompli using a highly specialized language
in a highly technical situation. Some anonymous technical writer on retainer must likely have
provided him with the language and information to relay the inner workings of ERCOT credibly.
Given how dexterously Mr. Magness avoids any language that could deflect blame back on the
company, this writer probably provided a crash course in damage control. It is notable how well
the first task of this writer– giving the CEO the technical information is hidden within the later–
treating that information with the rhetorical coating needed to withstand deposition.
METHODOLOGY
I want to examine precisely what work that role required and what was rhetorically
accomplished, extracting the rhetorical positioning from the base facts. In this paper, I will run a
rhetorical and ethical analysis on the 5 (of the 7) relevant answers that Mr. Magness provided
during ERCOT's congressional attestation, focusing on the efficacy of technical language and
writing in the genre of a deposition. Facilitating this analysis are five texts: "Rhetoric of Layoff
Memos," "Honesty May Be the Best Policy, But It Often Comes at a Price," "Between Efficiency
and Politics," "Genre as Social Action," and "Who Killed Rex?". I believe these writings, which
tend to come out of an ethics or rhetoric framework, work to provide a satisfying illumination into
the mechanics of the situation.
A brief note on the efficacy of both frameworks: As rhetoricians point out, the rhetorical
framework is frequently misunderstood as nothing more than the "manipulation of a text's
linguistic features" and has been associated with fraud or upkeep of institutional power
structures. Studying rhetoric entails examining how people are duped, with rhetoric defined as
the opposite of the truth. While this is not the entirety of what the rhetoric framework does, it still
can work to investigate how biases and motives are inscribed into a text– in this case, a
depositional one.

There is a similar qualification I want to make on the applications of an ethical framework. It is

unrealistic to assume that the framework can determine how a particular individual in a
particular situation is motivated primarily by a particular ethical perspective. The potential
influence of ethics (or lack of it) on an individual's communication behaviors is what I will focus
on here. The framework will then allow us to find the ethically treacherous points– or points
where ethics can be avoided altogether– inside an analyzed text.
 Schaumberg 17

In running ERCOT's deposition through the two frameworks, I will provide a general summary of
each answer (including rhetorical and ethical analysis) and pull quotes for analysis. This section
will use close reading analysis, as recommended by the 2010 essay "Rhetoric of Layoff
Memos." As Jasinski (2001) explains, "Close readers linger over words, verbal images,
elements of style, sentences, argument patterns, and entire paragraphs and larger discursive
units within the text to explore their significance on multiple levels" (p. 93) CTA is an ideal
method for those starting with the textual artifact itself. CTA rewards fine-grain analysis of the
given statements, "slow[ing] down the action within the text" through multiple careful readings.

ANALYSIS

"What protocols did ERCOT have in place to notify the public of the extreme weather
event and associated power disruptions? Please explain in detail and describe any
methods and technologies used to communicate with the public and the effectiveness of
these systems."
Mr. Magness, speaking for ERCOT, provides a brief description here of the networks for news
dispersal that ERCOT operates with, including mentions of the company website, Facebook
page, and Twitter account. Also mentioned is news agencies' role in relaying information,
including general emergency alerts.
For this answer, Bill Magnus, who acted as the spokesperson for ERCOT, lists the "Crisis
Communications Procedure procedures." The efficacy of these procedures is in question, as
most of the notifications to the public are provided through updates to the ERCOT website or
postings on ERCOT's Twitter and Facebook accounts, which would assume the audience is
already subscribing to the official accounts or even has internet access in the first place.
ERCOT cleverly gets around this fact by giving dates that note the number of people who visited
the website during or after the power outages, not before. To accomplish this, a rhetorical pose
of uncertainty is struck. "Gauging the effectiveness of ERCOT's communications presents some
difficulty," writes CEO Bill Magnus, "because it is unclear how many people viewed or heard
these messages, and how many changed their behavior because of them." This sentence
directly contradicts the final one– which mentions that ERCOT believes that much of the
confusion can be attributed to a lack of understanding of ERCOT's role. By noting that the
electric power industry and the operation of the ERCOT wholesale market might be too complex
for the audience to understand, the responsibility for clear communication during the panic is
subtly shifted away from the sender–ERCOT– to the receiver.

The answer details an event from Thursday, February 11, 2021, at 2:11 p.m.—almost four days
before load curtailment began—ERCOT mentioned that it was "expecting record electric use"
due to "extreme cold temperatures," which were expected to be "the coldest weather we've
experienced in decades." The notice mentions that ERCOT was "collaborating with transmission
operators to minimize possible transmission outages that could reduce generation availability or
otherwise impact the system's ability to serve demand." Speculation about how much ERCOT
 Schaumberg 18

knew about the potential for massive failure is out of the range of the essay. Still, any admission
about the chances of blackout would have been an intelligent rhetorical policy— scholars Allen
and Voss mention in "Ethics in Technical Communication" that open admission of possible flaws
or side effects before testing is the most effective move to reduce possible blowback. Given the
recency of the 2011 mass-blackouts, the rhetoric calculation happening here should have
weighed a full disclosure– including what ERCOT knew about the chances of blackouts— over
a more competitive answer. This complete disclosure would have made available all available
information to inform both Congress and the general public, regardless of whether it resulted in
significant reforms to ERCOT.

Instead, the unwieldy sentences work to shift some of any possibility of future blame away from
ERCOT. Notice how the language shifts agency solely from ERCOT to the "transmission
operators" in a "collaboration," which ignores the top-down structure that ERCOT oversees.

On February 14, the morning of the blackouts, ERCOT sent a message half the length of the
previous memo. "Grid operator requests energy conservation for system reliability." It mentions
that ERCOT had experienced "higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind
turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units." Again, the efficacy of
this is suspect– ERCOT relies on the internet to release this information.

ERCOT, in one of the last messages sent out to the Texas public, writes that "severe weather,
mainly frigid temperatures, is expected to continue, so we're not out of the woods." Notice the
complete change of tone here, from the technical writing towards the casual register. The
language of authority is vacated here as soon as it becomes clear that ERCOT might have the
authority to prevent blackouts. Notice the use of the communal "we" deployed here– ERCOT
considers itself part of the general public instead of an agency that should provide to them.

Please explain whether an increased connection with the Eastern and Western
Interconnections in the United States would have allowed Texas to import more power to
alleviate the electricity shortages experienced within the state.

Mr. Magness goes into a brief hypothetical about the efficacy of a larger interconnected grid,
ultimately concluding that it wouldn't have helped for the specific situation. On a somewhat
conciliatory note, the answer ends on the future plans to connect the Texas electrical grid with
the southern United States.

The answer given here exemplifies the rhetoric maneuvers needed to avoid culpability during a
deposition– notice the three qualifiers in the admission that it is "at least theoretically possible"
that additional transmission connections between the ERCOT Interconnection and the Eastern
or Western Interconnections may have allowed for some additional power imports to the
ERCOT grid during at least some of the disaster.
 Schaumberg 19

A key sentence: "For at least the earlier part of the week of February 15-19, the Southwest
Power Pool (SPP) and Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regions both
experienced operator-directed load curtailment events of their own due to cold-weather
generation impacts, with SPP issuing its first-ever curtailment directive." Notice the use of highly
technicalized terms and jargon (the sentence is almost composed of it in entirety) as an
obscurant. You can imagine how this would be received by anyone who isn't a seasoned grid
operator, which most members of Congress aren't. The semantic need for clarity is at odds with
the desired outcome from ERCOT, which is to avoid any statements that would lead to
regulation. Clear communication is not the goal here.

Out of all the questions asked by Congress, this is probably the most leading. ERCOT is
expected here not only to explain the confounding choices behind the layout of the power grid,
but to relay the results of those choices in a gesture of full disclosure. The refusal to do so is a
crucial rhetorical choice. What's provided before us is an excellent example of bad technical
writing, and an even better example of good rhetorical maneuvering.

Please explain if scarcity pricing worked as intended during this extreme weather event.
Please also explain why, in many cases, generators were physically unable to provide
power, but customers ended up with utility bills in the thousands of dollars.
Mr. Magness explains the scarcity pricing mechanisms illustrated as the cause behind the high
utility bills. Discussed is the economic structure of ERCOT, which relies on "competitive
markets" to distribute and price-value the electricity.

This is another question where the apparent ethical violation is covered in obscurant language.
Notice how the highly specialized language is implemented to remove the part of the ERCOT's
electricity provision where the power is actually provided to the consumer. "The overall purposes
of the scarcity pricing mechanism are to provide strong financial incentives for performance by
generators and for price-responsive demand by load. During the February 2021 event, there
were strong financial incentives for generation to be online and remain online through
emergency conditions." This is an illustrative example of how rhetoric that neglects any concern
for the human actors (in this case, dropping the power customers entirely) risks casting a dim
sociopathic light. This is particularly true if there's been a failure to provide on the consumer
end. What's given is a specious, self-containing answer that only works after removing human
actors from the equation, showing a complete lack of consideration for any questions a
layperson who purchases power from ERCOT's might have. Again, reading over this answer,
the consumer never seems to come in at any part of ERCOT's distributing process. While
technical jargon and elliptic language worked to avoid hard answers in previous questions, the
pointedness second of the question makes ERCOT's weaseling explicit.

Looking over this response, a reader might get the (probably correct) sense that ERCOT's
primary purpose for power grids is to create profits or "strong financial incentives"-- a technical
euphemism for creating a more considerable profit margin–with electricity produced for
consumers merely as a side effect. A more acceptable rhetorical maneuver is given at the end
of the periphrastic statement, where the president mentions that "Customers who had opted for
 Schaumberg 20

those much riskier service offerings did report extremely high bills during the February event.
The PUCT and the Legislature are considering measures that may restrict those competitive
offerings in the future, based on outcomes affecting customers who exposed themselves to
wholesale power price risk during the February event." This is another example of technical
language slyly moving the accountability towards the consumer. Effectively, the agency for the
decision is given to the consumer who purchased electricity from the second vendor wholesale.
The surprise here is that ERCOT didn't labor on the technical aspects of wholesale electricity
purchase risks to Congress to further distract from the ethical egregiousness. Ethically, ERCOT
appears to have been negligent in failing to recognize that the billing portion of the network had
also failed. Additionally, ERCOT might have gestured at a plan to compensate customers for
services not provided or for bills charged during the catastrophe. The poor choice in ethical
approach limits the rhetorical options.

Are there any existing protocols in place to ensure communication regarding natural
gas/electric supply coordination, particularly among ERCOT, the Texas Railroad
Commission, and the Texas Public Utility Commission? In your response, describe how
regularly ERCOT communicated with these entities leading up to and during this event,
the type of information shared, and your review of the effectiveness of these
communications efforts.

Mr. Magness goes into a brief hypothetical about the efficacy of an larger interconnected grid,
ultimately concluding that it wouldn't have helped for the specific situation. The answer ends,--
in a somewhat conciliatory note– on the future plans to connect the Texas electrical grid with
that of the southern United States.

The response to this question again neglects the agency of anyone at ERCOT to
actually affect the outcomes. Note the language that goes around any mention of people or
Texas citizens. This is reminiscent of the language of layoff memo's— C King points out that this
genre "….uses headcount instead of people or employees noting that the company is "targeting
non-headcount expenses wherever possible." Much like these memos, which often utilize
obscurant language, at no point does the answer use clear, concrete language to give the
audience what they'd actually want. There's no clear description of the scope of the breakdown
that would allow blame to be placed. Obviously, this is strategic on ERCOT's behalf—- they
want to avoid regulations—-but it's worth considering how little ERCOT actually positions
themselves as having control. The blackout is framed here as an event that had almost been
decided upon before ERCOT and the individuals who are impacted were actually informed,
leaving them with little choice but to accept it.

5. Please provide a detailed description of the reliability framework in Texas, including

but not limited to the roles of NERC, ERCOT, the Texas Reliability Entity, the Texas Public
Utility Commission, and the Texas Railroad Commission. In your response, please also
explain which entities have the authority to develop, implement, and enforce mandatory
reliability standards in Texas, including for natural gas infrastructure.
 Schaumberg 21

Mr. Magness provides a description of the network of companies and actors that regulate
ERCOT electricity, noting that none of the listed agencies have authority to develop, implement,
or enforce reliability standards for natural gas infrastructure, though they occasionally help in the
actual provision of electricity.
Rhetorically, ERCOT doesn't have to make a great effort into making the network of companies
and actors that create the electric grid seem complex and impenetrable. This answer calls to
mind theorist Clay Spinuzzi's Who Killed Rex, based on a Network Control Center of a regional
telecommunications company in West Texas. Much like the Spinuzzi's example, if a consumer
of ERCOT electricity isn't a resale customer, the organization powering their fridge and lights
works through a collaborative effort amongst providers. Locally, providers connect to one
another's equipment and networks; long-distance providers constantly lease space to one
another and compete for that space. Instead of a distinct physical network (for which ERCOT
might take culpability), what exists is a slew of interconnected, overlapping, splicing networks
managed by various companies. Again, the usual semantic need for clarity–in this case about
how power grids interconnect and overlap– is at odds with the desired outcome from ERCOT,
which is to avoid congressional or economic regulation. The correct identification of
responsibility that could come with a plain-language style is not the rhetorical goal here.

FURTHER ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS

When undergoing a deposition, the first question may be "what happened?" but the more
important question, the question whose answer offers some hope of understanding the
examined events, is "why did this happen, and who caused it?" There's a vested interest for the
deposed party—if it is culpable enough for an official investigation to occur—to rhetorically
maneuver any statement that might answer the latter question into statements that deal with the
former. If this is impossible, then the deposed, when answering the question of "who caused it?"
should try to affirm that it wasn't them or their organization rhetorically. The genre goal for
ERCOT is to create a situation where wrongdoing doesn't imply blameworthiness.

Despite the technical language deployed here, this is a principally classical rhetorical situation,
one "…where a speaker or writer sees a need to change reality and sees that the change may
be effected through rhetorical discourse." We can distinguish the primary audience for this text–
the congressional elect– from various subsidiary audiences, including the general public. One
might assume that ERCOT might want to provoke some deep ideological, emotional, or
psychological condition that must be changed within the auditors before they can accept the
agency's ideas around culpability. This approach, however, seems to be neglected. Instead, the
role of a technical writer for this exigent situation was to give Mr. Magnus answers the
appearance of addressing the concerns of both audiences in some way, all while shifting agency
for the event away from the organization. This was done by rhetorically positioning the grid's
collapse as an act of God, something that was irreversible before it actually happened. For
whatever ethical harm ERCOT might have done, Magnus claims, they only acted as agents in
an ill-conceived, ill-omened system. A technical writer was hired to illustrate those systems while
portraying ERCOT as without agency within them.
 Schaumberg 22

There's an additional role the writer played. As Nystrand reminds us, a discourse community
comprises people who "may very well never speak or write to each other," but who could
effectively so interact if required since they know the ways-of-speaking of the group" (15;
emphasis in original). Technical language serves a specific rhetorical purpose here: to prevent
as much possibility for effective interaction as possible, accomplished by bringing technical
writer's jargon, specialized speech, and a non-humanistic focus into any answer where a
regulatory committee would seek a discourse centered on disclosure. As always, we should
remind ourselves that the question asked by the rhetor Cicero– cui bono or "who benefits?" is
best understood as both rhetorical and ethical. It's the skeleton key to navigating the rhetorics of
a deposition.

CITATIONS

All citations are included in the footnotes. Provided is a link to the official congressional
transcript.