ERCOT urged federals to disrupt federal environmental limits during the winter storm

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

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

The request was sent on February 14 and calls on Secretary-General for Energy David Huizenga to allow certain power plants to operate at peak levels and to be allowed to exceed federal limits on emissions and wastewater by February 19.

“This duration will ensure an additional supply available at a time when ERCOT may continue to experience unprecedented cold weather that has forced generation to shut down,” the emergency request read. “According to ERCOT, the loss of electricity to homes and local businesses in restricted areas poses a much greater risk to public health and safety than the temporary exceeding of these permit limits.”

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The request to the DOE states that the storm is “expected to lead to a record demand for electricity in the winter, which will exceed even the most extreme forecast of ERCOT’s seasonal load” and “this period will go down in Texas weather history as being one of the most extreme events that have ever had an impact on the state. ”

The DOE accepted the ERCOT request at 19:41 CST on February 14th. ERCOT officials were unable to tell KPRC 2 what time the request was made to the DOE, but provided us with a notification to “All ERCOT Market Participants” notifying them of the DOE request at 17:58 CST.

You can read the full opinion here.

The wording of the request has a very different tone from the public statements of ERCOT officials made three days before.

“Right now, we believe we have the tools to maintain a reliable system,” ERCOT spokeswoman Leslie Sopko told KPRC 2 on 11 February.

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

“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 heating centers, given people a place to go.”

Henry said ERCOT had no idea of ​​this level of concern on February 14. Even after the storm, Magness said it believed ERCOT had an accurate forecast and accurately predicted customer demand. ERCOT Chief Operating Officer Dan Woodfin said last week that the loss of 185 power plants at the height of the storm was not expected.

“You knew it was bad, why didn’t you tell us that?” Henry asked. “Why did you stay with the blackout narrative?”

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

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“Nobody ever called us, we had to call them and ask ‘when does the run start?’ We have people who have been in the dark for 16 degrees 24 hours now, ”said Henry.

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

“I’m an environmental engineer, I never want to see plants that emit more pollution than they should, but everyone realized we were in a dangerous situation,” Cohan said.

Cohan said he disagreed that ERCOT officials had adequately predicted customer demand during the storm.

“They planned a storm as strong as the 2011 frost, and we had a stronger one,” Cohan said. “Their initial plan, at least the one they issued in November based on the forecast demand of 5-10 percent.”

ERCOT officials said they used the 2011 winter storm as a benchmark for training and screenings. As reported by KPRC 2, a more than 300-page report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation noted that wintering procedures at electricity producers were “either inadequate or not complied with. adequately ”. However, the winter plans submitted by the power plants to the Public Utilities Commission are voluntary at this time. ERCOT officials said they check 100 out of 600 plants each year to see if wintering plans are being followed, but acknowledge that they do not have the authority to force plant owners to adopt a certain type of plan.

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North American Electric Reliability Corporation, NERC, which has regulatory authority over power plants, is set to adopt mandatory wintering rules in November 2021.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick was clear in assessing ERCOT’s readiness for this storm.

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

On Thursday, hearings of the Senate and the Texas House will be held to investigate the cause of these failures, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, has also launched an investigation into Texas power grid problems.