TYLER, TX (EAST TEXAS NEWS) – State officials say the electric grid remained reliable as energy demand peaked on Friday morning. The storm represented the first major test for the system since last year’s outages.
“The grid was prepared for this event and is performing as expected, and it’s more dependable than ever,” said Peter Lake, chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission.
ERCOT’s interim chief executive Brad Jones confirmed Friday morning that there were no equipment outages tied to the weather.
When the state hit a peak demand of roughly 69,000 MW Friday morning, ERCOT’s dashboard showed ample supply to meet the load, with more than 86,000 megawatts of power available.
Speaking at a news conference in Austin, state leaders credited the 2021 legislation with readying the grid for such events.
“The weatherization requirements mean our generators are meeting and exceeding federal winter-readiness standards, and we’re seeing the benefits of that during this winter storm,” Lake said.
State Representative Chris Paddie (R) of Marshall helped lead the legislation that produced changes to the grid.
“I’ll address the three main areas of failure as I would describe them,” Paddie said. “And those were communication breakdowns throughout the process, weatherization issues, and oversight and accountability. And I think you’re seeing, again, examples in all three areas of things that are functioning considerably better today than they did a year ago.”
And while thousands of Texans experienced outages at times during the storm, Paddie and other state leaders stress that local outages do not reflect grid-wide problems.
“In those specific cases, those are issues with local providers,” Paddie said.
And even though the storm’s worst days are behind them, temperatures will continue to fall below freezing across much of the state overnight and into Saturday morning, meaning high energy demand will persist.
“We will remain at our highest alert level,” Jones said Friday. “In our system, that is called vigilance, and that vigilance has been in place since Wednesday. We will maintain it for several more days.”
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