What’s being done about the outages?

Originally written for Yoakum Herald-Times, Hallettsville Tribune-Herald, Moulton Eagle and Shiner Gazette. Currently unpublished.

On Thursday, Feb. 18, rolling outages were announced to have stopped. Governor Greg Abbott announced that all available repair trucks were dispatched to fix issues in electrical systems caused by the winter storm. In addition, water services all over the state have been disrupted, including the systems in Lavaca County.

“We will not stop until normalcy is restored to your lives,” Abbott said. “Until that moment comes, I ask all Texans to continue your efforts to take precautions that are needed to stay safe and warm.”

The question many citizens have been asking is “How did this happen?”

Experts say a deregulated energy market largely isolated from the rest of the country’s power grid was largely to blame for the failure. They said Texas’s decision not to require equipment upgrades to better withstand extreme winter temperatures left the power system unprepared for this event. Others have blamed specifically renewable energy, which combined makes up about 10 to 15 percent of Texas’s energy, but the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) officials said the state’s power system was no match for the deep freeze.

“Nuclear units, gas units, wind turbines, even solar, in different ways – the very cold weather and snow has impacted every type of generator,” Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, said.

Policy observers and many citizens have blamed state officials and agencies for not heeding the warnings of previous storms or account for more extreme weather events that climate scientists warned of. However, it is possible to “winterize” energy infrastructure including natural gas production and renewable energy production through practices like insulating pipelines. These upgrades have been proven to help prevent major interruptions in states with regularly cold weather.

Abbott criticized ERCOT, issuing an executive order that will add reforms for how the power grid is managed as an emergency legislative item for the state legislature to review. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office has also launched an investigation into ERCOT.