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Opinion

Sen. Hancock: I expect answers from the electricity industry and regulators about the outages

Your representatives in Austin must ask tough questions on the energy industry and of ourselves.

This op-ed is part of a series published by The Dallas Morning News Opinion section to explore ideas and policies for strengthening electric reliability. Find the full series here: Keeping the Lights On.

Texans are no strangers to natural disasters. We live in one of very few states that regularly sees it all: tornadoes, hurricanes, flash floods, hailstorms, droughts, wildfires and 100-day streaks of 100-degree temperatures.

Texans are also nothing if not resilient. But now, amid the exhaustion of a yearlong global pandemic, we’re forced to add something new to our state’s natural disaster preparedness list: a prolonged arctic blast impacting all 254 counties at once.

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Our transportation infrastructure wasn’t built for this. Our water systems weren’t built for this. Our fuel refineries weren’t built for this. Our agriculture sector wasn’t built for this. Our homes weren’t built for this.

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Our electric grid, one of Texas’ greatest and most critical assets, clearly wasn’t built for this.

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Simply put, Texas wasn’t built for winter weather this extreme, and we learned that the hard way. Our families endured long hours, even days, in the cold. Our businesses were already struggling to stay afloat in a COVID-19 economy and suffered additional losses they flat-out can’t afford.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the very entity which by name is expected to ensure electric reliability, didn’t.

Now your representatives in Austin must ask the tough questions of industry and of ourselves. You deserve answers, accountability and, above all, effective solutions.

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Armed with the facts — all of the facts — we will soon have a much clearer picture of the precise failures that occurred each step of the way on the electrical grid, including what could or could not have been avoided. Where any real malfeasance is discovered, those responsible must be held accountable to the fullest extent. Resignations are rarely enough.

That’s why I called an emergency hearing of the Senate Business & Commerce Committee on Thursday, which will be livestreamed on the Texas Senate website for transparent, widespread access to the proceedings.

This initial hearing is an in-depth, fact-finding damage assessment, a critical step after any disaster. Meticulous questions will be asked, and I expect to receive the complete and honest answers you deserve.

From the field operators at generation plants and the fuel supply chain that powers them, to ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission, to the utility companies that deliver your energy, every segment of the Texas electric industry will be present to tell us exactly how, why, when and to what magnitude their pieces of the system failed.

Let’s take generation, for instance. We know that wind turbines couldn’t rotate and solar panels were blanketed in snow and ice. Natural gas well-heads froze, and a nuclear plant tripped offline. As these catastrophic events stacked one on top of the next, nearly 30,000 megawatts of power generation capacity — a massive figure — was forced offline in just a few hours.

These basic facts surfaced during the storm and in its immediate aftermath, but for a truly complete picture, the committee will take a technical, step-by-step, moment-by-moment deep dive.

We have to look at absolutely everything, from the physics of electric grid inertia to the effectiveness of various winterization techniques to the financial structure of our state’s unique energy market, and how to protect consumers from the fallout. Because above all, you deserve thoughtful and effective solutions.

A number of ideas are already in motion, many of which are part of legislation I’ve filed and will continue to fight for, like spurring growth in energy storage.

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But this will be a complex, multipronged fix. No one, and certainly no politician, can claim to have the cure-all. It will take a lot of smart people at the table, plenty of public hearings in the weeks ahead, and government and industry stepping up to do what’s necessary to solve this the right way — the way that keeps Texas the economic envy of the nation and never, I mean never, allows such a monumental catastrophe again.

We will solve it, because Texans work together. Texans don’t give up. Together, we will recover stronger than ever. Next time, the Texas grid will be built for this.

Kelly Hancock is a Republican Texas senator representing portions of Dallas and Tarrant counties and chairman of the Texas Senate Business & Commerce Committee. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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