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The sweltering Texas heat is putting extreme strain on the same power grids that failed during February's deadly winter storms.
Newly released data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas shows that there have been a total of 1,280 summer power outages across the state. In addition, between June 14-18, 97 power plants had a total of 224 unplanned outages. Of those 97 plants, two-thirds went down during February's storms, according to KHOU.
Plants running off natural gas suffered the most, being responsible for 49 percent of all reduction in output, according to KHOU's investigation. Natural gas plants had a reduction of 8,894 megawatts during the June 14-18 span. Comparatively, 4,271 megawatts were unavailable from wind power and 2,098 megawatts were reduced from solar power, the station found.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, however, is not a supporter of alternate forms of energy. In a Tuesday letter calling for improvements to the Texas electric system, he backed "adequate and reliable sources of power, like natural gas, coal, and nuclear power," but ordered the state's Public Utility Commission to "allocate reliability costs to generation resources that cannot guarantee their own availability, such as wind or solar power."
On Wednesday, ERCOT spokesperson Leslie Sopko sent an email to Newsweek pertaining to why the outages are occurring at such a rapid pace.
"The unplanned outages during the week of June 14 were due mostly to mechanical failures. We did issue a Request for Information to the generation owners, and their responses are due back later this month. We hope to better understand whether there are any commonalities in those unplanned outages due to things like supply chain issues or routine maintenance delays resulting from the February winter storm," she stated.
Due to February's winter storm, 151 people lost their lives and ERCOT came under fire for the mishandling of the power outages. A number of high-ranking ERCOT members including Board chair Sally Talberg; vice-chair Peter Cramton, finance and audit chair Terry Bulger, and human resources and governance committee chair Raymond Hepper, stepped down from the board due to the backlash. ERCOT CEO Bill Magness apologized to other board members during a February meeting.
"I certainly could have done a better job emphasizing what was coming and had that communication with the board in more depth as well. So I understand your frustration," Magness said.
Another area of concern lies with a number of power plants checking "other" when they were asked to submit documents in reference to the outages. An ERCOT spokesperson stated that the power plants submitted more information, but the details are private.
"We do not disclose the manual notes since much of the information contains critical infrastructure and other highly sensitive information," an ERCOT spokesperson said in a statement. "ERCOT shares the priority of transparency and accountability reflected in the PUC order and has responded with a mechanism for rapidly reporting unplanned outages using an existing data extraction system."
Newsweek has reached out to ERCOT regarding further comments pertaining to the continued power grid issues.
