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Texas’ power grid was “four minutes 37 seconds away from a total collapse” during the recent historic winter storm – meaning the state could have been left in the dark for weeks, according to a report.
The astonishing revelation was made during an emergency meeting on Wednesday of the Texas Electric Reliability Council, a co-op responsible for 90% of the state’s electricity, KHOU reported.
“It was a devastating event,” ERCOT CEO Bill Magness said in his opening remarks at the board meeting. “Power is essential to civilization.”
Officials said ERCOT lost 48.6% of power generation at the height of the blackouts – and if the decline had continued, the remaining generators would have started disconnecting, leading to a possible system crash. which would have required a so called “black start”. . “
Magness doubled down on his claim that power outages were necessary to prevent such an outage in Texas, which is the only state to operate its own autonomous power grid.
“If we have a power outage in the system, the system is down for an indefinite period of time and it’s extremely difficult to bring it back,” he said, according to CBS Austin.
“We could still talk about powering the system back on if we let the system get to this state,” Magness added.
During the storm, 356 generators were taken offline, almost double what Texas experienced in its last major winter storm in 2011, KHOU reported.
ERCOT officials said on Wednesday it had 13 units to subscribe to in the event of a power outage, but six of those units suffered outages last week.
During the meeting, officials discussed some of the measures ERCOT has taken to prepare for the weather, including the cancellation of transmission maintenance interruptions and the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions to bring in workers. additional support, among other measures.
They also said that an order from the Energy Ministry allowed power producers to not meet certain environmental standards, which was very helpful.
According to CBS Austin, ERCOT officials said natural gas plants failed the most during the crisis. Wind turbines also had problems, but sometimes outperformed.
“There were a lot of issues around the gas supply during this event,” Magness said. “What I like to emphasize here is that the storm has affected every type of generation.”
He added: “We regret that this event took the time it took to resolve. What ERCOT wants to do today, what ERCOT wants to do in legislative hearings tomorrow and in the future, is provide explanations, not excuses. “
On Tuesday, ERCOT announced in a notice to the Texas Utilities Commission that four of its board members would resign effective Wednesday.
A fifth member has submitted his resignation separately and a sixth was announced at Wednesday’s meeting.
Governor Greg Abbott sent a statement saying he welcomed the resignation of the members, who all live out of state.
“The State of Texas will continue to investigate ERCOT and uncover the full picture of what went wrong, and we will ensure that the disastrous events of the past week are never repeated,” it read. part in Abbott’s statement.
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