[ad_1]
- A rare winter storm hit Texas, causing massive power outages statewide.
- But the entity that operates the state’s electricity grid said the outages could have been much worse.
- If the grid operators had not acted quickly, parts of the state could have been without power for months.
- Visit the Insider home page for more stories.
The blackouts that left millions of Texans without power or heat after a rare winter storm this week could have been far worse, officials said.
The Texas Electric Reliability Council, which manages 75% of the state’s deregulated electricity market, said on Thursday that the continual blackouts were implemented to prevent catastrophic and uncontrolled outages that could have lingered on. for months, according to the Texas Tribune.
The outlet reported that the state’s electricity grid was “seconds and minutes away” from the worst-case scenario.
According to the Tribune, officials said that early Monday morning, network operators noticed warning signs that large amounts of energy had started to dwindle, prompting them to quickly make the decision to implement outages. direct current as a precaution.
Unusually freezing temperatures in the region rendered the pouring sources unusable, the newspaper said, causing the grid power supply to drop as consumers began to turn up their heat to withstand the unusual cold.
The freezing weather caused an unprecedented demand for heat – the need exceeded the state’s capacity to supply it. Texas is the only state in the contiguous states to have its own electricity grid.
“The fundamental thing we need to do to protect reliability is to make sure there is no catastrophic power failure – to make sure we don’t end up in a situation where we restart the network from zero and where the electricity could be cut for an indefinite period, “Bill Magness, president and CEO of ERCOT, said during a press call, reported by BuzzFeed News. “This is the catastrophic scenario that our main task must avoid.”
Magness reportedly answered a question on the call about the state’s proximity to this disaster scenario and said “it was in seconds and minutes.”
If grid operators had waited to reduce the amount of power distributed when they noticed the drop, it could have resulted in “indeterminate” power outages statewide for months, Magness reportedly said.
In the worst-case scenario, if the network were completely offline, the equipment could have caught fire, the power lines could have fallen and the damage to the electrical infrastructure could have taken months to repair, the Tribune reported.
“As chaotic as it was, the entire grid could have been down,” Bernadette Johnson, senior vice president of energy and renewable energy at Enverus, a software and information company, told the newspaper. oil and gas company headquartered in Austin. “ERCOT gets a lot of heat, but the fact that it wasn’t worse is down to these network operators.”
An ERCOT spokesperson told the Tribune that nine network operators are working at all times to make these decisions.
“Ultimately, our operators are highly skilled and have the power to make decisions that protect the reliability of the power system,” the spokesperson said in a point-of-sale statement.
The near miss is another sign that the state was neither prepared nor equipped to face such a storm.
Although a disaster was averted, power outages and ongoing food and water shortages have crippled the state, as another winter spell hits the region. Hundreds of thousands of people remain without electricity Thursday evening.
ERCOT told the Tribune that “some level of service interruptions” may be needed for a few days, in order to maintain network stability.
[ad_2]
Source link