As Texas faced record-low temperatures in February 2021 and snow and ice made roads impassable, the state’s electric grid operator lost control of the power supply, leaving millions without access to electricity. As the blackouts extended from hours to days, top state lawmakers called for investigations into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and Texans demanded accountability for the disaster. The Texas Tribune covered the impact of the storm in real time and continues to bring accountability coverage as officials address the issues exposed by the storm. More in this series
Editor’s note: Bookmark this link for breaking news on the most important winter storm updates.
Gov. Greg Abbott declared the reform of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas an emergency item for the 2021 legislative session. Hours later, he said he thinks leadership at the entity needs to resign.
Texas’ top elected officials on Tuesday called for investigations into and resignations at the operator of the state’s power grid after a massive winter storm caused millions of residents in the state to lose power for long spans during frigid temperatures.
February Winter Storm 2021
When will my water come back? How can I get water in the meantime?
We do not know. State and city officials are urging patience — and telling Texans who have running water to boil it. Take whatever measures you need to prepare for several days without water. Officials in Austin, for example, said Feb. 19 that restoring water services would likely be a multiday process for the whole city. We have some resources here, but your best bet to find free water is to check your local media.
Will I get a large energy bill?
You shouldn’t immediately. Texas officials have signed an order temporarily preventing electricity providers from sending bills to residents. The order is a stopgap measure to give officials time to address a spike in some residents’ bills. Officials also signed an order to stop utility providers from cutting off service to residents who haven’t paid a bill. Read more here.
How can I get updates?
Sign up for news updates from us by texting “hello” to 512-967-6919 or visiting this page.
I was without power for more than a day. Why are people calling these rolling outages?
When the state’s electrical grid operator began implementing rolling outages at 1:25 a.m. CT on Feb. 15, these were intended to be a temporary measure to deal with an extreme winter event. Instead, some Texans are going without power for much longer, facing days without electricity instead of the originally planned 45 minutes at a time The electricity grid was designed to be in high demand during the summer, when Texans crank their air conditioning at home. But some of the energy sources that power the grid during the summer are offline during the winter. So when Texans stayed home during the storm on Sunday and demanded record amounts of electricity, the state’s power grid could not keep up.
Wait, we have our own power grid? Why?
Yes, Texas has its own power grid run by an agency called ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. The history is long, but the short version is: Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with federal regulations. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. But Texas’ utilities do not cross state lines. ERCOT was formed in 1970, in the wake of a major blackout in the Northeast in November 1965, and it was tasked with managing grid reliability in accordance with national standards. Note that Texas is not all on this same power grid. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas.
I read online that wind turbines are the reason we lost power. Is that true?
No. The lost wind power makes up only a fraction of the reduction in power-generating capacity that has brought outages to millions of Texans. An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said on February 16 that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy. “Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now.”
How can I stay warm? How can I help others?
The National Weather Service encourages people to close blinds and curtains, gather in one room if possible and close doors to others, and stuff towels in the cracks under the doors. Wear loose-fitting layers of warm, lightweight clothing. Eating snacks and staying hydrated will help to warm the body up. Some cities are providing warming centers and transportation as needed — find local resources here. If you have resources or are able to offer financial donations, find nonprofits who are helping people here.
“This was a total failure by ERCOT,” Abbott told KTRK Houston during an interview Tuesday evening. “ERCOT stands for Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and they showed that they were not reliable.”
Abbott declaring ERCOT reform a top priority this session allows the Legislature to approve bills on the subject during the first 60 days of the session, which began Jan. 12.
ERCOT, a nonprofit that manages the grid used by about 90% of the state, came under fire Tuesday as state lawmakers and other officials expressed frustration over its handling of the long-lasting outages. ERCOT officials said Tuesday that they could not estimate when those outages would end and warned more could be without service as it struggles to balance supply and demand to the state’s power grid.
In his interview with KTRK, Abbott said part of his issue with leadership there was the apparent lack of preparation before the storm hit the state.
“This is something I declared in advance, this is something our team had been talking to them in advance,” he said. “But all of that aside, they should be providing greater transparency, they are a public entity.”
And upon learning that about a third of ERCOT’s board members live outside of Texas, as first reported by Texas Monthly, lawmakers from both parties demanded residency requirements be addressed during the current legislative session.
Five of the members of ERCOT’s governing board, including the chairwoman and vice chairman, appear to reside either outside of Texas or the country.
Chairwoman Sally Talberg, for instance, is listed as living in Michigan. And vice chairman Peter Cramton is a Professor of Economics at the University of Cologne in Germany and the University of Maryland.
The governor’s latest announcement came hours after Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan asked two committees in the lower chamber to hold a joint hearing later this month to review the outages. Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, requested the House State Affairs and Energy Resources committees convene for the hearing on Feb. 25.
“We must cut through the finger-pointing and hear directly from stakeholders about the factors that contributed to generation staying down at a time when families needed it most, what our state can do to correct these issues and what steps regulators and grid operators are taking to safeguard our electric grid,” Phelan said in a news release.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the head of the state Senate, also weighed in on Tuesday, saying the Senate Business & Commerce Committee would hold hearings “to get answers to our questions.”
“Millions of people without power during this arctic blast is life-threatening and unacceptable,” Patrick said in a statement. “We must get to the bottom of this to be sure we are better prepared even if an unprecedented weather event happens again.”
None of the three leaders proposed specific fixes for ERCOT or the state’s energy supply, and it’s unclear what ideas they might have in mind.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins blamed the power failures on Abbott and the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry. He argued they prioritized commercial entities over residents by not requiring equipment to be better equipped for cold weather.
“We made a choice to get the lowest price possible for large commercial customers without doing the things that are necessary — that all the other states do — to protect residential customers in extreme weather,” he said.
“Bad policy predictably always leads to very bad results,” he added.
Other state officials have expressed concerns — and, in some cases, outrage — over ERCOT’s handling of the power outages. Millions of people have lost power, many for multiple hours or longer as temperatures remain well below freezing. At least 10 deaths have been reported. More freezing weather was expected for much of the state into Wednesday, and some areas are expected to see more snow.
“This whole situation is beyond infuriating. Completely unacceptable,” state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, posted on Facebook on Tuesday morning. “I am making it my personal mission to find those responsible for this and hold them to account. You deserve nothing less. You deserve better.”
One lawmaker, state Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, was early in calling for ERCOT’s CEO and board to resign.
And during a phone briefing with ERCOT on Tuesday afternoon, a number of state lawmakers demanded answers for what went wrong — and what the Legislature may be able to do to prevent similar failures in the future.
“While I hear the explanation of the weather, it’s just not acceptable to me,” state Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, said on the call. “It’d be different if we were getting weather that no one else has ever experienced in the history of this country.”
Jolie McCullough and Alana Rocha contributed reporting.
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