HOUSTON — Texas has had a year to get it right. To right the wrongs of its historic power failure. To restore public confidence and trust.
All of the new laws passed, new rules written and new reform measures put in place will be put to the test in the upcoming winter storm that’s expected to bring near-record electricity demand.
“This grid is more reliable than it ever has been in the past,” said Brad Jones, Interim CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
At a winter weather briefing Tuesday at a state operations center in Austin, Jones and a half dozens state officials pledge the Texas grid will hold up this week.
“We are ready for this storm, we’ll be prepared for this,” Jones said.
That preparation includes adding extra reserves earlier, before the storm hits, as well as making sure power generators are not offline due to routine maintenance.
“They are already bringing more generation online sooner than what happened last year,” said Governor Greg Abbott.
Since last year, power generators and transmission providers have been required by law to winterize equipment to meet federal standards and be subject to inspections and $1 million fines.
“Those power plants and transmission infrastructure have been inspected by ERCOT and found to be in near-universal compliance,” said Chairman Peter Lake of the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
No such legal mandates are in place for natural gas facilities just yet, but the Railroad Commission of Texas said many have begun to weatherize on their own.
“Inspectors have visited more than 4,000 facilities so far, about 98% of those facilities have been winterized,” said Commissioner Jim Wright.
ERCOT projects the peak power demand during the upcoming storm--about 71,000 megawatts—to occur on Friday morning.
State officials said the grid will have a capacity of 86,000 megawatts, a comfortable cushion for the cold spell ahead.
“Well they’re certainly saying what they should be saying,” said KHOU 11 energy expert Ed Hirs.
“Are we totally ready? And the answer is not for a storm like we had last February,” Hirs said.
Fortunately, this week’s winter storm forecast doesn’t look to pack nearly the same punch.
“If we can’t make it through this, then they’ve certainly overstated what they’ve done to fix the grid,” Hirs said.
State officials did clarify that there could be some localized power outages due to icy power lines or trees that have fallen on them. They said those issues are different from the stability of the grid.