Where’s the Reliability?

What to Know: Gov. Greg Abbott is calling for the leadership of ERCOT, Texas’ main power provider, to resign after millions of Texans were left without power in the worst winter storm on record.

The TPPF Take: ERCOT’s failures—along with bad policy decisions—directly led to the power outages.

“The short-term failure came at about 1 a.m. Monday when ERCOT should have seen the loads soaring due to plummeting temperatures, and arranged for more generation,” explains TPPF’s Chuck DeVore. “Texas came very close to having a system-wide outage for the whole state (in the ERCOT area, about 85% of the state) due to not arranging for more generation. This tripped the grid, knocking some reliable thermal plants (gas and coal) offline. This was a failure of the grid operator (ERCOT) not the power plants.”

To see Chuck explain the power outages on Fox News, click here.