‘The public is being left in the dark.’ Texas blocks records related to winter blackout
Months after a winter storm swept through Texas, leaving millions without electricity, power companies and the state entities that regulate them continue to block access to records that could shed light on the circumstances surrounding the deadly freeze.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and reporters across the state have requested access to winterization records and communications related to the storm, which is estimated to have a death toll in the hundreds. So far responses from state entities have been sporadic, leaving an incomplete picture of preparations and response to the disaster, even for the Texas Legislature as it designed Senate Bill 3, a signature bill that Gov. Greg Abbott said would “fix all of the flaws that led to the power failure.”
“There were hypotheses made, but no one seemed to have the aggregate information about what had actually happened,” said Donna Howard, a state representative from Austin who worked on the legislation as part of the State Affairs Committee. (She added the Legislature was told by the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT more information would eventually be studied and reported.)
Absent the documents or further transparency, the public — and the elected officials tasked with representing the public — don’t know exactly why the outages occurred, which power plants followed 2011 recommendations for winter preparation and whether any of those winterization techniques actually helped.
“I think the public is being left in the dark about what went wrong,” said Daniel Cohan, a civil engineering professor at Rice University who extensively tracks the Texas power grid. “And what we’re getting is a bunch of generalities and vague statements that don’t tell us what we need to know about what went wrong and how to fix it.”
The Star-Telegram has received some records related to the winter storm, such as communications between state officials in the form of texts and emails. Among the records yet to be released are Emergency Operations Plans for power providers that outline how the entities will respond in times of crisis and include weatherization plans. The PUC does not plan to release the report, citing a Texas attorney general’s decision that the state agency cannot make them public.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office has also determined that the state’s power grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, is not subject to the Public Information Act, marking another hurdle in the release of records related to the storm.
The PUC said it plans to publicly release a winter storm study, which it contracted with the University of Texas to complete. But the organization did not respond to the Star-Telegram’s request to discuss what type of information would be included in the report, specifically the success or failure of weatherization plans and other details that may illuminate the cause of the winter outages. It is also unclear when the report will be released.
‘Heroes’ and ‘engineer wizardry’
With record low temperatures ahead, Abbott on Feb. 13 warned Texans of an unprecedented winter storm. As he did, Abbott assured residents the state wouldn’t run out of power.
The next evening, the temperature dropped to 7 degrees in Fort Worth. But Abbott’s promise held true. ERCOT, the quasi-governmental agency that manages the grid like an air-traffic controller, kept outages at bay throughout the day.
In a text chain obtained by the Star-Telegram, then-ERCOT CEO Bill Magness told Abbott-appointed PUC commissioner Arthur D’Andrea “engineer wizardry” had helped ERCOT keep the lights on despite record demand for power. Just before midnight, D’Andrea texted Magness, “You are a hero leading a team of heroes.”
Far greater challenges were immediately ahead.
At 12:14 a.m. on Feb. 15, Magness had an update for D’Andrea: “Several thermal units have tripped,” he said, using the energy industry lingo for fossil fuel power plants.
Fearful the entire grid would collapse, ERCOT initiated statewide blackouts around 1:30 a.m. Millions of people had no heat for days. ERCOT has defended the decision as necessary to prevent a statewide blackout as demand outpaced supply.
But even as lawmakers responded with a wide-ranging law aimed at preventing future crises like those seen in February, there are gaps in information. For instance, while ERCOT confirmed in an April report power plants failed from a combination of frozen infrastructure and a lack of fuel supply (natural gas wells and transmission lines froze in the storm), it did not reveal anything more specific, including how and where the infrastructure froze.
“ERCOT’s report is just saying there were weather-related issues and equipment issues. But what were they?” Cohan said. “We know it was cold. We know it was icy. But just knowing there was cold weather and equipment problems doesn’t tell us how that could be fixed.”
All the while, many Texans recall a similar — albeit less severe — storm in 2011 and wonder why the grid wasn’t fixed then. At the time, the Legislature passed a bill that directed the PUC to recommend improvements for winterization techniques but did not require power plants to winterize. The April ERCOT report did not indicate whether the power plants that winterized their facilities fared better than those that did not.
“We don’t yet know publicly whether the things that broke in 2011, that caused the failures in 2011, are the same things that broke and failed in 2021,” said Ross Baldick, a University of Texas electrical and computer engineering professor emeritus who consults for the electricity industry.
Power companies, Texas push back
To better understand the failures of the grid, the Star-Telegram and other media outlets began requesting in February PUC documents regarding winterization and Emergency Operation Plans, which outline power providers’ strategies for extreme weather.
The 2011 law required utilities to turn over weather preparedness reports to the PUC. And as a state entity, the PUC is required to turn over governmental information requested by the public unless directed otherwise by the attorney general.
After getting a deluge of requests, the PUC notified power generation companies that as third parties they had the opportunity to petition Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office regarding the release of documents. According to the correspondence, which was obtained by the Star-Telegram, the PUC listed several legal exceptions and court cases the power companies could use to attempt to block the release of records.
For weeks, dozens of power companies, including industry giants like NRG and Vistra Corp., did just that, sending objections to Paxton’s office. They argued the records would reveal proprietary information, as well as critical infrastructure vulnerable to terrorist attacks. One company, Capital Power, stated in a letter to the AG its weatherization plans contained information that ensured the “protection of the public” and “grid reliability.” Its wind power facility near Stephenville was forced offline during the storm.
While winterizing can be complicated given the size and complexities of power plants, the actual steps for preparing for winter are fairly standard, according to people familiar with the energy industry. Carey King, assistant director at the University of Texas’ Energy Institute, said winterizing involves everything from ensuring employees can reach the facility or live at the facility during severe weather to insulating pipes and other equipment, as well as conducting tests on the quality of insulation.
Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at SMU, understands power companies and the PUC may have good reasons for objecting to the release of certain information related to emergencies, but he does not see why winterization records should be off limits to the public. “I can’t imagine how weatherization plans ... could be proprietary,” he said.
Joe Larsen, a Houston attorney who works with the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation, would give ERCOT and the PUC a “D” if they were getting a grade on their release of records related to the winter storm.
“They’re pursuing, I think, frivolous legal arguments and procedural stumbling blocks to prevent release of the most important documentation necessary for a robust discussion of what happened,” Larsen said.
The attorney general also recently ruled that ERCOT, a nonprofit organization under the supervision of the PUC, isn’t subject to Texas’ law dealing with the release of public information. Typically all governmental bodies are subject to public information requests. (ERCOT wrote in a court ruling it is an “arm of state government” in order to request immunity from lawsuits.)
“The people of Texas need to know that … they’re not being allowed to see critical information that will help prevent this from happening again,” Larsen said, “because of third party interests that are overriding the public good.”
‘I think that we need additional information’
Two weeks after the storm, Texas lawmakers on the Senate Business and Commerce Committee and House State Affairs Committee, started grilling leaders of ERCOT and the PUC, as well as industry professionals. The hearings aimed to figure out what caused the statewide outages and how to prevent such an event from happening again.
Among the bills responding to the winter storm is Senate Bill 3, which requires weatherization for natural gas facilities identified as critical, as well as electricity generators and transmitters.
Sen. Kelly Hancock, a North Richland Hills Republican who chaired the Senate committee at the time, said no questions were off limits as lawmakers learned about the circumstances surrounding the outages.
“Every question that wanted to be asked was asked and answered,” he said.
Drew Graham, a spokesman for Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican who authored Senate Bill 3, said it was crafted using information from public legislative hearings.
Sen. Nathan Johnson, who sat on Hancock’s committee as well as the Jurisprudence committee that heard the Senate bill, described the public hearing process as triggering further conversations and questions that prompted him to reach out for more information from industry professionals. He pointed out that legislators only meet every other year in Texas and generally don’t specialize in electricity.
“It’s not realistic to think that we could come up with a bill that tells every single plant of every single era of every single generation style how exactly to weatherize and to what degree,” Johnson, a Dallas Democrat, said. “And so ERCOT and the PUC are going to have to make a lot of those decisions, but they can bet that the Legislature is going to be watching to see what they do.”
Howard, the Austin representative on the State Affairs Committee, agreed the Legislature’s role was not to pinpoint specific issues at specific plants, but she wanted aggregate information about the causes, which she said was not made available. “Chair (Chris) Paddie was in a difficult position to balance all the players, both politically as well as policy-wise,” she said, “and I think came out with something that did move the ball forward.”
But lawmakers, Howard believes, still need access to better information to evaluate whether ERCOT, the PUC and the Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates oil and gas, are properly doing their jobs and setting correct standards. Chris Turner, a Grand Prairie representative who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, echoed her sentiments.
“I think that what the Legislature did is a good first step, but I think that we need additional information and more time to come up with long term, comprehensive proposals to address the problems we had in February,” he said, “and see that they don’t happen again.”
Questions remain as special session looms
Information about Emergency Operation Plans and weatherization may not stay private forever, no matter how much the PUC, ERCOT and power companies challenge the release of records.
ERCOT and dozens of power companies, including Exelon, Vistra Corp., NRG and Tenaska, face lawsuits related to the power outages, and discovery and testimony may eventually propel the records into the public. Of course, various litigation, some of which has already been delayed by the Supreme Court of Texas after a motion by ERCOT, could take months or years.
There’s also the upcoming PUC report on the outages. Baldick, the professor emeritus at the University of Texas, believes an anonymized report with aggregated data could maintain companies’ privacy while still releasing important information to the public.
“Assuming that we get the right statistics, it gives us the sort of information that we need from a public policy perspective to make policy decisions going forward,” Baldick said.
The Legislature will convene July 8 for a special session, so the timing and content of the report could determine how much focus the lawmakers spend on Texas’ power system. If the report isn’t available for several more weeks or doesn’t adequately address the root causes of the outages, another two winters may pass before the Legislature fully understands what went wrong and gets another shot to craft legislation that better helps the grid withstand winter weather.
The agenda hasn’t been set for when the legislature reconvenes, and a spokesperson for the governor wouldn’t say whether items related to the power grid would be on the bill, instead reiterating that the agenda will be announced before the session starts.
“We did an enormous amount of work,” Hancock said, when asked whether he thinks the shoring up of the power grid should be addressed in a special session. “We’ve got to, kind of, let the rules be written out, and the PUC knows their job and responsibility, and so I think we’ve got plenty to move forward with the improvements that have been made.”
As legislators meet, Texas will be experiencing a summer where trust in the grid is low, especially after ERCOT asked the state to conserve energy this June when several power plants underwent unplanned outages. ERCOT at the time said it didn’t know why. The grid saw roughly 11,000 megawatts of power lost, with one megawatt typically powering around 200 homes on a summer day, according to ERCOT.
There is at least one noticeable change since the February storm: The PUC, under new leadership, has directed ERCOT to work on an accelerated timeline to get some details about the latest outages and their cause, citing a need for increased transparency. That information is expected in the coming days.
But even as Texans await more information about the power grid’s latest issues, they’re left to wonder what went wrong almost five months ago.
And, of course, there are only six months until winter.
This story was originally published July 1, 2021 at 10:57 AM.
