ERCOT head cites transmission companies as source of power distribution problems
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas placed much of the blame on transmission operators this week when Texas Democratic members of Congress demanded an explanation of outages that left millions of Texans without electricity for extended periods of time.
ERCOT did not discuss a plan if the statewide grid does not stabilize in the next 24 hours.
President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Magness said in a response to the members of Congress, “The steps that we have had to take to implement outages were put in place in order to stabilize the grid.”
The Public Utility Commission of Texas did not provide an explanation to the members of Congress.
Instead, it referenced calls from government officials for an investigation into ERCOT’s practices.
ERCOT is a nonprofit corporation that manages more than 26 million Texans’ flow of electricity and represents 90% of Texas’ electrical load.
Ten members of the Texas Democratic congressional delegation wrote to ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission of Texas on Tuesday “to express grave concern over the lack of power and heat for millions of Texas families in the middle of dangerous winter storm[s] with record low temperatures.”
They included questions for ERCOT and the PUC hoping to “better understand” the issues Texas is facing.
Asked how ERCOT is “enforcing the equitable distribution of ‘controlled’ power outages,” Magness said that once ERCOT determines outages are needed, transmission operators determine what circuits are disconnected.
Oncor is Texas’ largest transmission and distribution electric utility and reported 4,456 outages in Tarrant County Wednesday, which affected nearly 136,700 customers. Early Thursday, Oncor reported 1,213 outages affecting 39,651 customers.
Asked how energy providers in ERCOT’s network are managing these outages, Magness again cited transmission operators.
“The decisions of which circuits to disconnect are left to the transmission operators, as they have the most detailed knowledge of their service territories,” he said. “In some cases, transmission operators prioritize circuits to avoid disconnecting critical loads such as hospitals, nursing homes, police/fire/EMS facilities, 911 call centers, and customers with certain health conditions.”
Magness said ERCOT waited until Feb. 14 to announce power outages because it didn’t know the effect storms would have on generators.
“While ERCOT certainly expected the storm would have some impact on the system, ERCOT could not have known at that time that so many generating units would become unavailable as a result of the unprecedented weather conditions,” he said.
Magness said the company is working with transmission operators, generation operators and large industrial customers to increase the generation supply.
DeAnn Walker, the state PUC chair, did not answer the delegation’s questions. Instead she referenced calls for the Texas Legsislature to investigate ERCOT’s practices.
“The Public Utility Commission will work with the Governor’s office and the Texas Legislature to assist in the investigation and to implement any reform measures passed this session,” she wrote in her response.
The members of Congress acknowledged the necessity of some outages, since ERCOT declared a statewide power generation shortfall emergency on Monday. However, they expressed issues with the length of outages during the winter storm.
“We understand that the demand for power continues to exceed supply and the importance of stabilizing the statewide grid, but controlled outages are supposed to be limited to 10 to 15 minutes before being rotated to a different neighborhood,” the letter said.
They also pointed out problems with how electricity is being distributed.
“As while Texans were freezing in the dark last night, many downtown skylines continued to shine bright,” the letter said.