NBC 5 Investigates is learning much more about what the state’s grid operator, ERCOT, did in the days and hours before the huge outages that put millions of people in danger.
ERCOT is at the center of a political storm right now, as Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) blames the organization for not recognizing that the impending storm could bring down so many power plants.
At a news conference on Friday morning, ERCOT responded, saying it saved Texas from a much more catastrophic meltdown – which was perhaps only seconds away.
ERCOT operations messages detail what was happening inside the ERCOT control room in the chaotic minutes before much of the state plunged into darkness.
At 1:12 am on Monday, controllers issued an alert that said “it may be necessary to implement rotary interruptions”.
In just 13 minutes, this alert jumped to level 3 – the highest level – while ERCOT ordered utilities to turn off the power to millions of homes.
“We don’t act, we don’t do anything, we could have a much worse event. And I know that it is difficult to imagine a much worse event now, ”said ERCOT CEO Bill Magness.
Magness described how his team quickly implemented controlled outages occurring within minutes or seconds of an uncontrolled cascade power outage that could have paralyzed Texas for much longer.
“We would be talking about when we could estimate, weeks or months from now, that we would see the power system repaired and we would still see people suffering from disruptions,” said Magness.
But while Magness spoke of heroism to avert a broader catastrophe, Abbott said again on Friday that ERCOT was to blame for the disaster that occurred.
“They said that five days before the arrival of the winter storm – ERCOT – assured us that, in quotes, we are ready for the cold temperatures coming our way,” said Abbott.
ERCOT’s operations message records show that it first alerted mills to the impending storm on February 8, issuing an “extreme cold approaching” warning and telling mills to “review and implement preparation procedures for the Winter”
ERCOT then sent three more short weather warnings to the factories over the next four days before the storm arrived.
But then ice and cold brought down more than a third of the state’s power generation equipment.
“I mean, it was a huge scale. It was a 40% failure and this is unbelievable … probably well over 10 million people who have run out of energy at some point, “said Rice University energy expert Daniel Cohan.
Cohan said the scope of the failure showed that Texas mills need stronger protection in the winter.
“Natural gas systems work very well in Alberta and wind turbines work very well in Antarctica, Denmark. and then anything is possible for a price, ”said Cohan.
The governor is calling for new laws requiring mills to do more to protect themselves from the cold, and next week the legislature will question ERCOT employees and energy executives at hearings in Austin.
“If there are things we can do differently or better, we want to hear about it, because we don’t want an event to happen like this,” said Magness.
Ironically, new federal rules that would require power plants to take specific measures to protect themselves against the cold are now being considered. Currently, plants must have an emergency operation plan, but there are no applicable rules that require specific protection against winter weather.
Federal officials from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) also said they would investigate.
NBC 5 Investigates spoke to North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the group that FERC has charged with enforcing federal rules.
The organization said one thing it would look at is what has been done to protect Texas power plants since the 2011 winter storm that caused continuous outages.
After that storm, recommendations were made for improvements. But the question is how well these recommendations have actually been implemented in the past 10 years.
On Friday morning, ERCOT returned to normal operations, which means that there is now enough electricity to meet demand.
Any remaining interruptions are likely due to equipment problems in local areas.