TEMPLE, Texas — Nearly one year ago Winter Storm Uri forced Texas power plants to break down and go offline at an alarming rate. One day in, around 185 power generators had tripped offline, forced the state into blackouts, and left the Texas power grid at only 44,000 MW to keep critical infrastructure going.
One day into the massive ice storm of February 2022, the grid is holding strong at more than 80,000 MW of available power. Meanwhile the current demand in Texas is only 68,000 MW which means our grid has quite a bit to spare.
In a Thursday morning press conference, Governor Greg Abbott was able to tout the many improvements signed into law by the Texas legislature and put into action by new leadership at the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT.
Last year, Winter Storm Uri left wind turbines frozen and useless across the state. The state's fleet of wind energy was left contributing somewhere around 1000 MW to the grid. Thursday, the state's wind power was averaging between 16,000 and 18,000 MW of constant power depending on the hour.
Last year, cold weather forced power plants offline hundreds of times. This year, ERCOT isn't reporting any weather outages. It turns out that the policy of required winterization works.
"We have not seen any of our generation go offline due to cold weather situations," ERCOT CEO Brad Jones said. "Which is an indication that our weatherization program was working as we had hoped."
Lawmakers had also been frustrated to find out some power generators had gone offline during Uri storm for maintenance. This year, the Public Utility Commission had made sure plants got that maintenance out of the way before cold weather hit.
"Last year some generators were not available due to maintenance operations during the course of the winter storm," Abbott said. "This year more generators are online because they were required to do maintenance before or after the winter season."
Abbott said the power grid was scheduled to have a surplus of 10,000 MW Thursday night and Friday morning. That leaves a much higher margin of safety in case any power plants go offline for any reason Thursday night. Even then, PUC Chairman Peter Lake said power plants have repair crews standing by if anything goes wrong.
Even with the grid functioning properly, there are still thousands of people without power due to falling limbs and freezing power lines, and power transmission companies have their work cut out for them as they try to get those lines repaired.
Once those lines are connected however, the expectations are clear. Officials have no room for error, or excuses, this time around.
"Unlike last year, we will be operating the grid in a much more conservative approach with a bigger margin of safety and reserves and an abundance of caution," Lake said. "Our generators are winterized to not only meet, but exceed, federal standards."