Texas Freeze: ERCOT can do better than counting on failure-prone Gas

Texas, along with most of the country, is about to get hit with an Arctic blast that will plunge temperatures to extreme lows. But the all-too-recent memory of Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 causing rolling blackouts, hundreds of deaths, and billions in unexpected utility bills leaves Texans more worried than the rest of the country about their power staying on next week.

Unfortunately, their worries are real despite Governor Abbott’s insistence that all will be fine. Almost three years after that traumatic event, Texas’ state legislature and regulators have done little to insulate their constituents for the next big freeze beyond requiring weatherization inspections, a woefully insufficient measure.

Instead, Texas policymakers used the tragedy to subsidize expensive and unreliable fossil fuels. The state legislature’s main response to Uri was authorizing billions in state money to double down on the main cause of its last disaster: natural gas power plants.

Gas plants are “disproportionately vulnerable to failure”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric
AEP
Reliability Corporation found that Texas’ over-reliance on natural gas was the main cause of blackouts during Winter Storm Uri – more than 80% of ERCOT’s natural gas powered backup generators failed, prolonging outages while residential electricity demand spiked 250% higher than normal because people cranked up the heat.

Gas
GAS
generation has become our grid’s hidden Achilles Heel: A recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found gas plants are “disproportionately vulnerable to failure” in extreme temperatures and were responsible for 56% of the capacity knocked offline during Uri. The problem is that extreme cold can freeze gas plant equipment like valves, water lines, sensors and inlet air systems and embrittle rubber and silicone seals.

Fortunately, the market forces that Texas Republicans tried hard to suppress are too strong, and ended up saving ERCOT during last summer’s extreme heat waves, when the state was hotter than 99% of the Earth’s surface.

Because of the free market orientation of Texas’ electricity system, it produces more electricity from renewables than any other state and is second only to California when it comes to grid scale battery capacity. And as I outlined in an earlier article, these clean resources kept the grid float and Texans cool in unbearable heat.

These same renewables and batteries will make a meaningful difference next week. During the worst of the upcoming freeze wind power is expected to produce at least 10 GW on the coldest mornings, with solar adding at least 7 GW mid-day along with 3 GW of batteries that can ensure clean power can meet atleast a fifth of ERCOT’s forecasted peak demand of 80 GW.

Renewables and batteries aren’t a silver bullet

However, renewables and batteries are not a magical replacement for unreliable natural gas plants. Other extremely cost-effective measures can prepare the Texas grid to weather future big freezes, as noted by Energy Innovation researchers in the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri.

The first is energy efficiency. Texas, and much of the south, has poorly insulated houses that rely on inefficient electric resistance heaters. Fortunately, technological advancements and policy delivered through the Inflation Reduction Act point to a better way. Replacing these resistance heaters with heat pumps that are often three times as efficient can cut consumer electricity bills using a federal tax credit to offset much of the upfront cost.

Texas energy expert Doug Lewin estimates inefficient resistance heaters in poorly insulated homes contributed 30-40 GW of demand during Uri’s worst conditions, accounting for 45-55% of the total load and thereby precipitating the grid collapse.

The Texas Public Utility Commission has been authorized by the state legislature to develop rules to increase residential energy efficiency, but the agency hasn’t even started the process more than seven months after the bill was signed by the Governor. Texas has a golden opportunity to pass strong energy efficiency standards that could result in a heat pump boom in the state aided by Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.

The second is ending the Texas grid’s isolation by connecting it with the rest of the country. A geographically larger grid is a more reliable grid – make the grid larger than the storm, as they say.

It makes intuitive sense – the nearby Southeast and Southwest experience different weather patterns and temperatures, with different impacts on renewable and fossil power plants’ reliability. And it would have dramatically reduced the astronomical power price spikes that hit customers during Uri. A recent report by Grid Strategies found that if the Texas grid had been connected to adjacent regions during Uri it would have yielded savings “approaching $1 billion for 1 GW of additional ties between ERCOT and the Southeast, and over $100 million for most of the other [nearby regions]”.

Even outside of extreme events, connecting Texas’ ERCOT grid to the rest of the country can save consumers lots of money. A recent study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found some of the most valuable opportunities for interregional transmission lie in exchanges between Texas and surrounding regions.

What comes after this storm?

With another big freeze bearing down on Texas, it’s hard to witness the understandable angst that Texans feel about whether their grid will hold up. What makes it worse is that we’ve known for years how to make the grid more resilient against extreme weather.

I hope that blackouts, sky high bills, and unnecessary suffering never happen during extreme weather events. But what comes after the storm is where hope becomes reality. For a reliable grid, Texas policymakers just need to take common sense actions.