Texas officials have warned they may need to use rolling blackouts to ease the strain on the state’s power grid this winter, despite the same strategy resulting in over 200 deaths during a previous storm.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said it may need to employ controlled outages if temperatures plunge below freezing for days on end as they did in February 2021.
ERCOT ordered rolling blackouts to help cope with the surge in demand as Texans cranked up the heating to cope with the plummeting mercury. Hundreds of people subsequently died.
At its peak, four million people were kept in the dark for a record 70.5 hours after 365 generators were knocked offline as a result of the severe weather.
The situation was so severe prompted President Biden declared a state of emergency to unlock federal aid for the Lone Star State.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said it may need to employ controlled outages if the state sees a similar deep freeze to the one that paralyzed Texas by knocking out its power grid in February 2021
The plummeting temperatures more than 4 million homes plunged into darkness amid the unprecedented rolling blackouts adopted by ERCOT which have been linked to the deaths of more than 200 people during the cold snap
ERCOT has revealed it is weighing up similar rolling outages to manage the demand for power this winter, with blackouts most likely to occur at 8am when usage tends to be greatest due to people waking up
Now ERCOT has warned there is a 14.4 percent chance it will need to employ controlled outages in December, with the estimate rising to 16.8 percent in January.
The state operator said the blackouts were most likely to occur at 8am, to coincide with when most people wake up and start using electricity.
The strategy has raised eyebrows given that more than 200 people died following the storm in February 2021, with many of the deaths attributed to the power cuts.
Deaths were registered as a result of hyperthermia due to indoor temperatures plunging to deadly lows, accidents and carbon monoxide poisonings, as people turned on heaters and grills in a desperate attempt to stay warm.
The storm resulted Texas experiencing some of its coldest temperatures in more than 30 years, with some areas breaking records that more than a century old.
It also shut down the nation’s largest oil refinery. Motiva said it closed the Port Arthur, Texas, refinery due to the ‘unprecedented’ freezing conditions along the Gulf Coast.
As temperatures plunged and snow and ice whipped the state, much of Texas’ power grid collapsed, followed by its water system.
ERCOT decided to adopt the rolling outage strategy after the grid began to buckle under demand, later admitting at one point it was just four minutes and 37 seconds away from total collapse.
The rolling blackouts were blamed for more than 200 deaths. People developed hyperthermia, got into accidents and sustained carbon monoxide poisoning after trying to keep warm using heaters and grills
At its peak, four million people were kept in the dark for a record 70.5 hours after 365 generators were knocked offline as a result of the severe weather
At the time, officials said the blackouts were, a ‘last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.’
It meant that Texans were left without power and heat for days on end in some cases while the mercury plummeted to a low of -20F.
People who fled to the homes of relatives or neighbors had to consider the risks of contracting or spreading the coronavirus.
The strain on the grid has been partly attributed to Texas’ surging population, which has grown by a fifth since 2010.
ERCOT data shows that usage hit record levels over the summer and continues to set new records each month.
Attempts to keep pace with the increased usage have seen developments in green energy such as solar or wind farms, however these are weather dependent.
Wind turbines, which account for a fifth of the state’s energy, froze solid amid the bitterly cold temperatures.
Snow covered the Texas roads almost three years ago when millions were plunged into darkness for more than 70 hours
A rare winter snowfall measuring at least half a foot hit central Texas as the State Capitol in February 2021
This combined with the lack of new natural gas plants which can produce energy on demand and the weather created a perfect storm which left millions without power and water.
‘The resource mix that’s changing on the grid isn’t really helping to pick up the growing peaks in the winter,’ ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas told the Boston Globe.
‘That’s why there’s this growing risk profile that we need to deal with. ‘
However, power failures were seen across in every part of the energy sector.
While wind turbines and solar panels froze, a major nuclear plant lost half of its generation, and there were massive failures in coal, oil, and natural gas.
Oil production in the country’s largest crude-producing state plunged by more than two million barrels a day due to the storm, sending prices surging to $60 a barrel for the first time in a year.
Homes in the Westbury neighborhood are covered in snow in Houston, Texas, when the storm hit in February 2021
Power failures were seen across in every part of the energy sector. While wind turbines and solar panels froze, a major nuclear plant lost half of its generation, and there were massive failures in coal, oil, and natural gas
Demand surged, meanwhile, as people accustomed to mild Texas winters turned on their heat.
ERCOT board chairman Sally Talberg branded the February 2021 situation a ‘humanitarian crisis’.
In the wake of the deaths, new protocols were adopted around extreme weather for power plants, including incentivizing them to maintain a backup supply in case of emergencies.
But the situation could be replicated again this year after experts revealed the El Niño weather pattern is expected to reach ‘historic’ levels.
During such winters, there is more snow than average in Texas and the Midwest area of the U.S. and western states like Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
A report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation found that, ‘a large portion of the North American bulk power system is at risk of insufficient electricity supplies during peak winter conditions.’