![]() ![]() TALE OF TWO FREEZES: How Texas power grid stayed on during 1989 cold snap In either case, years of weak oversight, preparation, communication and coordination among regulators responsible for the reliability of Texas’ natural gas supply and power grid allowed oil and companies to skimp on minimal safeguards that could have prevented or minimized the deadly and devastating power outages, according to industry analysts and documents. Since the power crisis, the electricity and natural gas industries have engaged in a chicken-and-egg blame game - generators say they couldn’t make electricity because of gas shortages and gas companies say they couldn’t deliver the fuel because of power shortages.īoth were likely factors, according to analysts and experts, although a full assessment won’t be known for months. The Railroad Commission is the state’s oil and gas regulator, overseeing the production sites, processing plants and pipelines that make up the state’s natural gas system, which provides the fuel to generate about half of Texas’ electricity. “And the gas system is really a Railroad Commission thing.” “Everybody’s trying to throw ERCOT, wind and power plants under the bus, but it’s the gas system that primarily failed us,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. About 9,300 megawatts of the gas generation outages, or more than one-third, were due to fuel shortages, according to ERCOT. Much of the blame for last month’s colossal power failure has been directed at the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, but electric companies and industry experts said natural gas-fired plants were responsible for about half the power generation that was knocked out during the storm.Īt its peak, some 25,000 megawatts of gas-fired power plants were taken offline, enough to power 5 million homes. The catastrophic blackouts that crippled Texas during the recent winter storm were caused largely by the energy industry’s failure to ensure reliable natural gas supplies to power plants - a problem that state regulators and industry leaders have known about for at least a decade. ![]() ![]() Brett Coomer, Staff / Houston Chronicle Show More Show Less A shortage of natural gas has been blamed for much of generating outages during the recent winter storm. Brett Coomer, Staff / Houston Chronicle Show More Show Less 6 of6Ĭooling towers are shown in this file photo at NRG's TH Wharton Generating Station. Cleburne, left, and William Holloway work in the control room at NRG's TH Wharton Generating Station. Brett Coomer, Staff / Houston Chronicle Show More Show Less 5 of6 Louis DeLuca Show More Show Less 4 of6Īn exhaust duct door is shown at NRG's TH Wharton Generating Station in this file photo. In this file photo, steam rises into the morning air at the Panda Power Plant in Sherman, Texas, north of Dallas. In this file photo, General Manager Darryl Nitschke talks on the radio as he makes the rounds of the Panda Power Plant in Sherman, north of Dallas. ![]()
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