AUSTIN, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – Oncor Electric Delivery CEO Allen Nye began his testimony before the State Senate on Friday, February 26, as well as the CEOs of other companies in the energy sector.
“I want to say that I fully understand all the indignation and anger of all Texans.”
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Nye appeared during the second consecutive day of hearings at the Texas Capitol, where the Senate Business and Commerce Committee and the State and Energy Affairs Committee investigated what led to last week’s widespread interruptions, causing millions of Texans lost electricity, heat and water for days.
Nye testified when the first winter storm hit Texas overnight on February 15, the state’s grid operator, ERCOT, repeatedly ordered them to cut power to more of their customers to prevent a catastrophic blackout.
“We were two / one thousandths of a 1% from triggering the last security blanket that this state has.”
Initially, he said the intention was to make continuous stoppages, for 15 minutes on and 30 minutes off.
But he said this was impossible because the plant’s operators remained offline and there was not enough supply to meet demand.
“The generation was falling so fast and we were told that she was coming back and we would be up all night waiting for her and she would never show up. Or a little would do, and something else would fall. I could not estimate during those periods whether the generation would return so that I could take it home. I had no idea.”
Nye said Oncor should have done a better job communicating with customers because many of them have been in the dark for so long.
He also told lawmakers why the lights remained on for about 40% of his customers.
“If you live on a feeder that also goes to a hospital or if you live on a feeder that goes to a 911 call center, then you are not rotated, either.”
This left about 50% of customers dealing with power outages.
In a frank moment, he said he didn’t realize that his house was on such a feeder, until he woke up with the lights still on.
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He is not close to any critical infrastructure, so he said he called his company to ask them to cut their power, which also affected their neighbors.
In all, Nye told lawmakers that about 1.3 million customers have lost power.
Most of them were because there were not enough power plants in operation.
Of these, he said about 140,000 customers were left in the dark because Oncor’s power lines froze during storms.
As reported by CBS 11, natural gas processors have lost energy in the field, making it impossible to supply natural gas to plants that need fuel to operate.
Before the House committees on Friday, the chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, Christi Craddick, who oversees the gas industry, said ERCOT did not realize what was happening. “When I say that there is a lack of communication from ERCOT, they did not understand that they needed a continuous flow of gas to be able to put gas in the plants.”
Nye said that before the storm they identified 35 gas facilities that needed to continue receiving electricity.
But after the interruptions began, Nye said he received calls from many others. “During the event, we added 168 new critical gas facilities. We called them all right away and kept them on all the time. “
He told lawmakers that his company and other transmission owners, power plant operators and the gas industry need to develop an updated list.
Energy experts told CBS 11 that improvements need to be made to the electricity and gas networks holistically to avoid the kind of widespread power outages that happened last week.
On Thursday, the first day of hearings, Curt Morgan, CEO of Vistra Corporation of Irving, which operates power plants, told House Committees that unless the state has continuous and integrated gas and power systems, the same problem will happen again.
Morgan recommended that a single authority oversee the two systems, but that is not the case now.
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While the Railway Commission regulates the gas industry, ERCOT oversees the power grid and reports to the Texas Public Utility Commission.