This really doesn’t mean what Abbott wants it to mean:
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s power grid operator, forecast that electricity demand Friday morning would reach roughly 74,000 megawatts. However, it topped out at only about 69,000 megawatts.
“We do not expect demand to exceed that amount for the rest of the storm,” Gov. Greg Abbott said. “At the height of power generation supply, more than 86,000 megawatts of power was available. … That's important because that far exceeds the estimated demand during last year’s winter storm.”
Most of the state remains in low temperatures, with North Texas remaining at or below freezing temperatures as of Friday afternoon. Abbott said the entire state is expected to be at or below freezing temperatures Friday night and most of the state will see subfreezing temperatures for the next few nights.Last February several power plants were down for maintenance and couldn’t have provided energy. This is normal in Texas because winters seldom create the power demands summer does. Severe cold weather across the state of Texas seldom lasts longer than 48 hours, as it did this time.
In February 2021 the severe cold reached the Texas Gulf Coast, and stayed for days. It blanketed the state, down to the Rio Grande. Natural gas lines froze, shutting off more power plants. The storm wasn’t replicated this time, or the results would have been.
The power plants that were off-line in 2021 could be off-line now, too. ERCOT is the public face of electricity regulation in Texas, but it has no regulatory power. There is no agency in Texas that can force power plants to even operate. The system depends on the market providing incentives, which is to say as power becomes scarce, ERCOT allows the price to rise to entice more generators to come on-line. (ERCOT’s power to regulate prices is actually very limited, too.) This is why electricity in Texas rose to astronomical heights. That system is what made sure there was power this time. It’s why there was enough electricity. Abbott and the Legislature had nothing to do with it. That and the fact this was a normal Texas winter storm.
Many Texans braced themselves for the cold snap across the state, nervous after last year’s weeklong and widespread blackouts. But so far, the situation has been a fairly typical Texas cold front. Demand on Texas’ electrical grid was far lower than ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, had predicted. Abbott said the grid’s performance this week should give residents confidence.
“The Texas electric grid is more reliable and more resilient than it has ever been,” he said.
…
Abbott credited the surplus of energy to changes that legislators made following last year’s winter storm.
After last February's blackouts, Texas lawmakers passed legislation aimed at preventing electricity blackouts, but it will likely take years before those changes are fully implemented.
So the Texas grid responded to what it was designed to handle. Nothing more, nothing less. And February isn’t over. Although we lost almost 300 people last year to a failure that shouldn’t have happened; and I don’t hope for history to repeat itself. I’m just afraid that’s inevitable.
And all Abbott can do is whistle past the graveyard.
8/ As November turned to December, Abbott’s team asked the Association of Electric Companies of Texas to put out a “positive” statement about the power grid’s readiness, according to four people in the energy industry familiar with the request. https://t.co/WzYnHA7VGd
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) February 5, 2022
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