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Last month, Texas experienced an extreme winter storm, with low temperatures not seen in decades. One of the unfortunate results of the storm was a widespread failure of the electric system: Millions of Texans were without power and safe drinking water, some of them for several days. Because many Texans rely on electricity to heat their homes, the situation became dire — dozens of deaths have been reported, and the final toll may top 100.
The failure of the power grid was the result of multiple factors: The widespread use of electricity to heat homes led to unprecedented levels of demand; hundreds of generation sources (coal, nuclear and natural gas plants, along with hundreds of wind turbines) were hobbled by the cold; natural gas infrastructure itself was disabled as gas froze at wellheads; and because much of the gas delivery infrastructure relies on electricity, the initial failures sparked a vicious cycle of cascading blackouts before the Texas grid operator was able to stabilize the system by cutting power to millions of customers.
While this may seem like an unfortunate confluence of events, the reality is that every one of these events was a foreseeable, and preventable, consequence of extreme cold. In 2011, in fact, a similar but less intense winter storm left over a million Texans in the dark due to the same cold-related failures seen last month. In the intervening decade, Texas added 1.6 million new homes, most of them heated with electricity, while doing next to nothing to address the known vulnerabilities of its electric system.
Since the Federal Power Act of 1935, Texas has gone to great lengths to isolate its electric system from neighboring states. This isolation allowed Texas to avoid nearly all federal oversight; the Texas grid is operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), overseen by the Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC). As with most Texas regulatory bodies, ERCOT and the PUC have worked to minimize regulations, including those related to safety and reliability. They have consistently favored business-friendly approaches, and cheap electricity — at a cost we only see in situations like the past month.
In evaluating grid safety, we look for scenarios that can plausibly disrupt a large fraction of generating facilities within an electric system. In California, we have seen such events resulting from extreme heat, most recently last August. The week of Aug. 14-19, California experienced several of the hottest days in its recorded history. On two days, Aug. 14 and 15, the California grid operator, CAISO, was forced to call for rolling blackouts to maintain system stability. Notably, on the hottest day, Aug. 18, CAISO was able to avoid outages despite serving the highest demand ever recorded; CAISO was able to adjust to the situation by a combination of backup capacity and temporary limits on exports of electricity. Ultimately, the California blackouts were much shorter, less widespread, and less devastating than the Texas blackouts last month.
The Texas and California experiences illustrate the importance of rigorous, thoughtful regulation. Like most electric grids, the California grid uses a capacity market, a system of requirements that keeps surplus power generators online to respond to short-term needs for generation; Texas has no such market. California is also governed by the Federal Electric Regulatory Commission (FERC), which issues guidance on the safe maintenance of power plants and other infrastructure. Finally, California’s rigorous building energy codes have curbed statewide electricity demand, while creating homes better able to withstand temperature extremes, even without power; Texas building codes are far less rigorous. All of these measures could have blunted, or even eliminated, the worst of the consequences that we saw in Texas.
In summary, regulation matters, and good regulation can avoid disasters and even save lives. California faces difficult questions as it builds the carbon-free energy grid of the future, but its robust, transparent regulatory processes are ready to take up the challenge.
Jeff Aalfs is a member of the Portola Valley Town Council and board chairman for Peninsula Clean Energy, San Mateo County’s nonprofit electricity supplier.
Those of us who have lived in Mountain View or elsewhere in California for several decades remember all the blackouts. The heavy tax-and-spend policies and heavy regulations back then did not prevent the blackouts then and will not prevent future problems. The real causes are complex and varied in Texas, in California, and world-wide.
We need a comprehensive plan and broad actions. A single blame (global warming) or a single solution (more regulation) is not reality.