Days after Hurricane Beryl came ashore as a Category 1 storm, millions of people in the Houston area lost power as temperatures rose to dangerous levels. The preparation for and response to the storm are rightly being called into question.
While on an economic trade trip in Asia, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission to study what happened and whether it is part of broader system failure. The question that needs to be answered is whether Texas’ power infrastructure, and the response to natural disasters in general, are dangerously fragile and inadequate. We suspect they are and that these issues should be prominent on the Texas Legislature’s “fix it” list when it returns to session early next year.
During an interview with Bloomberg TV from overseas, Abbott asked “why this is repeatedly happening in Houston,” presumably a reference to a windstorm in May that left more than 1 million Houston-area customers without power. He also wondered aloud whether structural flaws in the electricity delivery system or a shortage of manpower in the right places contributed to problems in restoring power.
Abbott wasn’t the only elected official seeking answers. Houston Mayor John Whitmire said the region’s energy provider CenterPoint, “needs to do a better job,” and U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, whose congressional district includes parts of Houston, blasted CenterPoint for “creating a public health crisis forcing people to recover from a hurricane while they survive extreme heat.”
Abbott’s focus on the Houston area is a solid starting point, but a comprehensive review must include not just how state leadership, the electric utility, the grid and other parts of the state’s power systems responded, but also whether problems encountered in Houston can help establish better emergency responses elsewhere in the state to tornadoes, dangerous straight-line winds or other natural disasters. Major storms in late May and early June also severed power to millions in North Texas for days.
Texas is located in an extreme-weather zone and will continue to be battered by record heat waves, catastrophic flooding and deadly storms that drive up electricity costs and compromise service reliability. After a winter storm in 2021 nearly crashed the entire state power grid, Texas lawmakers committed billions of dollars to shore up the network, subsidize gas power plants with low-interest loans and grants, and encourage companies to adopt strategies and equipment to keep the lights on.
Few energy experts think that the state has done enough to fortify the grid, which had its doubters even before the 2021 storm. As more businesses and residents come to Texas, the reliability of the grid and the ability to restore power after a natural disaster takes on new urgency. Blistering hot days, damaging cold snaps and now slow recovery times after natural disasters raise additional concerns about the overall vulnerability of the state’s power ecosystem that need to be addressed now.
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