Pablo Vegas, president and CEO, Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
Brett Coomer/Staff photographerAt an event hosted by the U.S. Energy Association, a trade group, Vegas said there simply wasn’t enough investment being put into developing the transmission lines, natural gas pipelines and other infrastructure upon which the power grid relies.
“The reality is risk is increasing. We’re all seeing it,” he said. “If we do smart things with investments in resources, we can bring that bring that risk down. But we need to make smart decisions.”
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The warning comes almost two years after Winter Storm Uri knocked out power to millions of Texans, in the aftermath of which federal officials found the power sector had not done enough to keep up with a shift in power generation toward renewables along with a rise in extreme weather events.
“We’re having enough trouble keeping up with where we are right now, trying to balance the generation that’s retiring and the new additions that are coming on,” he said.
ERCOT officials have taken steps to strengthen the Texas power grid’s resiliency over the past two years, including expanding demand response programs where customers get paid to reduce power and mapping out critical energy infrastructure to avoid shutting off power to those facilities, as happened during Uri, said Rudy Garza, CEO of CPS Energy in San Antonio.
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“Even if customers do see power go out, it’s going to be shorter periods of time off,” he said. “I don’t know we can do any more than (we’ve) done other than get steel in the ground, and that doesn’t happen overnight.”
The Texas Legislature earlier this year approved $7.2 billion in public funding for the construction of new natural gas-fired power plants, but there’s skepticism whether those plants will actually be built considering the relatively cheap cost of electricity in Texas.
“That could be game changing for the industry and start to address elements of reliability economically,” he said. “But we need a strong backbone of transmission.”
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ERCOT CEO joins chorus of utilities warning of winter blackout risk in Texas, nation - Houston Chronicle
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