ERCOT urged federal government to suspend federal environmental limits during winter storm

As last week’s historic winter storm swept through Texas, officials from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, called on the federal government to temporarily suspend environmental limits for several power producers.

The request, signed by ERCOT CEO Bill Magness, asked the US Department of Energy to issue an emergency order and declare that an “electrical reliability emergency exists in the state of Texas that requires an intervention by the secretary ”.

The request was sent on February 14 and calls on Acting Secretary of Energy David Huizenga to allow certain power plants to operate at maximum levels and exceed federal limits for emissions and wastewater discharge. until February 19.

“This duration will ensure the availability of additional supply during a period during which the ERCOT could continue to experience unprecedented cold weather that has forced production out of service,” the emergency request said. “In ERCOT’s opinion, the loss of electricity to homes and local businesses in areas affected by the cuts poses a much greater risk to public health and safety than temporary exceedances of these permit limits. “

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The request to the DOE notes that the storm “is expected to result in a record winter demand for electricity that will exceed even ERCOT’s most extreme seasonal load forecasts,” and “this period will go down in Texas meteorological history as l one of the most extreme events of all time. impact on the state. “

DOE granted ERCOT’s request on February 14 at 7:41 p.m. PST. of DOE request at 5:58 p.m. CST.

You can read the full review here.

The wording of the request is very different in tone from the public statements made by ERCOT officials three days earlier.

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

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While the ERCOT released news on February 14 asking the public to conserve energy, several elected officials criticized the organization for not sounding the alarm further.

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

Henry said he had no idea ERCOT had this level of concern on February 14. Even after the storm, Magness said he believed ERCOT had an accurate forecast and accurately predicted customer demand. ERCOT’s senior system operations manager 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 stick to the blackout story?”

Henry said the county did not receive a call from ERCOT officials, but eventually received information from energy providers, such as CenterPoint and Entergy.

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“No one ever called us, we had to call them and ask ‘When does the shift start? We have people who have been in the dark in 16 degree weather for 24 hours now, ”Henry said.

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University Daniel Cohan, Ph.D. understands why ERCOT made the request and why the DOE accepted the request.

“I’m an environmental engineer, I never want to see factories emitting more pollution than they should, but everyone has realized that we are headed for a dangerous situation,” Cohan said.

Cohan said he disagreed with ERCOT officials correctly forecasting customer demand during this storm.

“They predicted a storm as strong as the frost of 2011 and we had a stronger one,” Cohan said. “Their initial plan, at least the one they released in November, under expected demand of 5-10%.”

ERCOT officials said they used the 2011 winter storm as a benchmark for preparation and projections. As KPRC 2 reported, a more than 300 page report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation noted that winterizing procedures at power generators were “either inadequate or insufficient. followed ”. However, the wintering plans submitted by the power plants to the Utilities Commission are at this stage voluntary. ERCOT officials said they check 100 out of 600 plants each year to see if wintering plans are being followed, but admit they lack the power to force plant owners to adopt a specific type of plan.

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The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, NERC, which has the power plant regulator, is expected to adopt mandatory wintering rules in November 2021.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was forthright in his assessment of ERCOT’s preparedness for this storm.

“I think ERCOT was not prepared, they told us they were ready, obviously they weren’t,” said Patrick.

Texas Senate and House hearings will meet to investigate the cause of the failures on Thursday, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, also launched an investigation into the problems with the Texas power grid.