ERCOT asked the feds to pause federal environmental limits during the winter storm

As last week’s historic winter storm was passing through Texas, officials from the Texas Electric Reliability Council, ERCOT, were asking the federal government to temporarily lift environmental limits for several energy producers.

The request, signed by ERCOT CEO Bill Magness, asked the United States Department of Energy to issue an emergency order and declare an “existing electrical reliability emergency in the state of Texas that requires the Secretary’s intervention.”

The order was sent on February 14 and asks Interim Energy Secretary David Huizenga to allow certain plants to operate at maximum levels and to exceed federal emissions and wastewater release limits by February 19.

“This duration will ensure that the additional supply is available during a period during which ERCOT can continue to experience an unprecedented cold climate that forced the generation out of service,” said the emergency request. “In ERCOT’s judgment, the loss of energy for homes and local businesses in areas affected by reductions poses a much greater risk to public health and safety than temporarily exceeding these permission limits.”

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The DOE request notes that the storm “is expected to result in record winter electricity demand that will exceed even ERCOT’s most extreme seasonal load forecast” and “this period will go down in Texas climate history as one of the most extreme events impact the state. ”

DOE responded to ERCOT’s request at 7:41 pm CST on February 14. ERCOT employees were unable to tell KPRC 2 what time the DOE request was made, but provided us with a notice to “All ERCOT market participants”, notifying them of the DOE order at 17:58 CST.

You can read the full notice here.

The text of the request has a very different tone than the public statements made by ERCOT employees three days earlier.

“At the moment, we believe we have the tools to maintain a reliable system,” ERCOT spokesman Leslie Sopko told KPRC 2 on 11 February.

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Although ERCOT released news on February 14 asking the public to conserve energy, several elected officials criticized the organization for not sounding like an alarm anymore.

“If someone had told us, ‘We’re in trouble’, we would have made completely different decisions,” said Galveston County Judge Mark Henry. “We would have opened heating centers, we would have given people a place to go.”

Henry said he had no idea that ERCOT had that level of concern on 14 February. Even after the storm, Magness said he believed ERCOT had an accurate forecast and accurately forecast customer demand. ERCOT’s senior director of system operations, Dan Woodfin, said last week that what was not expected was the loss of 185 power plants at the height of the storm.

“You knew it was bad, why didn’t you tell us that?” Henry asked. “Why did you continue with the blackout narrative?”

Henry said the county has not received a call from ERCOT employees, but has finally received some information from energy providers such as CenterPoint and Entergy.

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“Nobody ever called us, we had to call them and ask ‘when does the roll start? We have people who have been in the dark in 16 degrees for 24 hours, ”said Henry.

Associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University Daniel Cohan, Ph.D. understands why ERCOT made the request and why DOE responded to the request.

“I’m an environmental engineer, I don’t want to see plants emitting more pollution than they should, but everyone realized that we were going into a dangerous situation,” said Cohan.

Cohan said he disagrees with the fact that ERCOT employees adequately predicted customer demand during the storm.

“They planned a storm as strong as the 2011 freeze and we had a stronger one,” said Cohan. “Their initial plan, at least what they issued in November under expected 5 to 10 percent demand.”

ERCOT officials said they used the 2011 winter storm as a reference for preparation and projections. As reported by KPRC 2, a report of more than 300 pages from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation noted that winter preparation procedures for energy producers were “inadequate or were not followed properly”. However, the winter preparation plans submitted by the plants to the Public Service Commission are voluntary at this time. ERCOT officials said they check 100 of 600 plants each year to see if winter preparedness plans are being followed, but admit that they have no authority to force plant owners to approve any specific type of plan.

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North American Electric Reliability Corporation, NERC, which has regulatory authority over power plants, is expected to adopt mandatory winter readiness rules in November 2021.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was straightforward in his assessment of ERCOT preparation for this storm.

“I believe that ERCOT was not prepared, they told us they were ready, obviously not,” said Patrick.

On Thursday, Texas Senate and House hearings will be held to investigate the cause of these failures and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, has also launched an inquiry into Texas grid problems.