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Opinion

Gov. Abbott, the Texas electrical grid is not fixed

The grid came uncomfortably close to another round of outages because of mechanical failures at a large number of power plants.

This editorial 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.

One week after Gov. Greg Abbott declared Texas’ electrical grid was fixed, the state faced the possibility of a summer meltdown.

And we haven’t even hit 100-degree weather yet.

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“The Legislature passed comprehensive reforms to fix all of the flaws that led to the power failure,” Abbott said on June 8. “Bottom line is that everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas.”

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But the grid on Monday came uncomfortably close to another round of outages because a large number of power plants, 11,000 megawatts of capacity, had mechanical failures that knocked them offline. This includes one of Vistra’s nuclear reactors at Comanche Peak in Glen Rose, which shut down because of a fire at the main transformer. (We understand that the fire was not near the reactor and was extinguished without help from the fire department.) A disproportionate amount of the failures were natural gas plants and wind turbines, representing nearly two-thirds of the outages, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state grid.

In fact, the reforms the Texas Legislature completed this session may have been an improvement, but they don’t guarantee that the lights will stay on. The vaunted weatherization rules designed to avoid another freeze catastrophe don’t go into effect for some months, and in any case, the weather on Monday was nothing special in Texas, with temperatures in the high 90s.

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So why did so many power plants stop working? Since ERCOT rules prevent the grid operator from disclosing for 60 days the plants that went down, we don’t know which companies are responsible. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission discloses reactor outages within 24 hours, so we do know about Comanche Peak, and Vistra confirmed the fire.

ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission should adopt this 24-hour disclosure rule. Texans deserve to know who failed them.

Without the excuse of extreme weather causing plant outages, we have to wonder if poor maintenance or inadequate staffing were at issue. Are power plant operators skimping on maintenance? Did regulatory uncertainty this year lead plant operators to delay needed investments?

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We could say ERCOT had one job: To keep the electricity flowing to consumers, and it stumbled this week. But lawmakers have not explicitly made ERCOT responsible for ensuring the lights stay on and the air conditioners keep whirring. ERCOT doesn’t have the mandate or the tools to keep power plants in good working order. That’s the responsibility of the plant owners.

If power plant operators are unable to keep the juice flowing on a normal June day, what can we expect when temperatures reach triple digits? Electricity is not a luxury good; the February outages reminded us that electric reliability is often a matter of life or death.

If power companies cannot ensure reliability of their plants, then the governor must step in with regulations that have teeth, and give the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT the tools to enforce maintenance requirements and to ensure power plants are generating electricity when Texans are depending on them.

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