Four ERCOT members resigned after a power outage in Texas

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Four members of the board of directors of Texas Electric Reliability Council, the entity that manages and operates the electricity grid that covers much of Texas, will resign Wednesday, according to a notification to the Public Utilities Commission.

Sally Talberg, Chairman of the Board; Peter Cramton, Vice President; Terry Bulger, President of Finance and Audit; and Raymond Hepper, chairman of the human resources and governance committee, will resign at the end of the ERCOT board meeting on Wednesday morning, according to the statement. All four live outside the state.

Craig Ivey, who also lives outside Texas, should fill a vacancy, but withdrew his application, according to the notification.

ERCOT board members were set on fire last week when it was reported that some board members did not live in the state. ERCOT officials, during a press conference last week, said they removed personal information about directors from its website because board members were facing harassment.

The council was also criticized for managing the mass disruption of last week’s mass stream during a winter storm that killed dozens of Texans. More than 4.5 million customers were without energy at some point last week.

The government of Greg Abbott called on ERCOT board members to resign after the crisis and said in a statement on Tuesday that it welcomed their resignation and promised to investigate the network operator.

“I welcome his resignation,” Abbott said. “The lack of preparation and transparency at ERCOT is unacceptable. We will make sure that the disastrous events of last week will never be repeated. ”

Talberg, a former state utilities regulator who served on the Michigan Public Utilities Commission from 2013 to 2020, lives in Michigan. Talberg has participated in various state, regional and national committees and committees involving issues of electricity, natural gas, oil, infrastructure and telecommunications. Cramton, a professor of economics at the University of Cologne and the University of Maryland, lives in Germany. Cramton has focused his research on the electricity and financial markets. He has advised many governments and has been on the ERCOT board since 2015.

Bulger has worked in the banking industry for 35 years, including various positions at ABN AMRO Bank in Canada, Europe and the USA and lives in Wheaton, Illinois. Hepper, a former litigant for the US Department of Justice, retired in 2018 from working for the network operator that manages the electricity system in New England and the wholesale markets in the six states.

Ivey, whose appointment was approved by ERCOT members but was awaiting final approval from the PUC, is drawn from more than three decades of experience in the utility industry. He lives in Florida, according to an ERCOT announcement about his candidacy for the board of directors. Most recently, he was president of Consolidated Edison Co. of New York Inc., a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison Inc.

ERCOT representatives did not return calls for comment, but said in a statement, “We look forward to working with the Texas legislature and thanking the board members for their service.”

Fifteen directors are on the ERCOT board, including the four unaffiliated directors, whose resignations will take effect at the end of Wednesday’s meeting. Vacancies will not be filled immediately.

For ERCOT to maintain its certification as an independent organization, the board of directors, which should consist of 16 members, must include five that are not fully affiliated with “any market segment”. Ivey would have been the fifth unaffiliated member.

“The chairman of the board, the vice-chairman of the board and both management positions of the chairman of the committee shall be vacant”, according to the notification submitted by the lawyers representing ERCOT.