By Shelby Webb STAFF WRITER
Officials with Texas’ electric grid manager say they have inspected more than 300 electric generation units — which make up about 85 percent of the capacity that was knocked offline during the February freeze — as part of their efforts to have the state better prepared for freezing weather.
A preliminary report filed by officials by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, said of the 302 units inspected, only 10 had issues that required correction.
Woody Rickerson, ERCOT’s vice president of grid planning and weatherization, said the final inspection report will be filed with the Public Utility Commission of Texas on Jan. 18.
“Texans can be confident the electric generation fleet and the grid are winterized and ready to provide power,” he said. “New regulations require all electric generation and transmission owners to make significant winterization improvements and our inspections confirm they are prepared.”
The units inspected were mostly among those that went offline during the February freeze, said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow with the University of Houston. He said the inspections made this year were proposed, but never realized, after another major freeze in 2011 led to statewide power outages.
“ERCOT is pronouncing these plants weatherized, or at least on their way, and that’s good,” Hirs said. “But there are still 400-plus plants they haven’t expected, and we have to count on the inspections having been meaningful.”
The Legislature increased the maximum penalties for violating weatherization rules to $1 million per day per violation after most of the state’s power generators were knocked offline during a winter storm in February, which contributed to hundreds of deaths and plunged millions of Texans into a freezing darkness for days.
Since the freeze, ERCOT, the state’s electric grid manager, and the Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT, have pledged to make sure such catastrophic power outages do not happen again. The 10 generation units that ERCOT officials flagged since beginning inspections in December represent about 2,129 megawatts of power, or about 1.7 percent of all power generation on Texas’ grid.
One megawatt is enough electricity to power about 200 homes.
The grid manager also inspected transmission facilities and found that of 22 inspected, six had potential issues.
Officials with ERCOT said most of those have already been corrected and most were mild issues, such as cabinet heaters that were out of service or missing weather stripping on cabinet doors.
Officials said they will conduct follow-up inspections on generation and transmission facilities.
Still, experts say they will remain skeptical about the grid’s reliability until it’s tested again.
“With nearly 20 percent (of generating units) not reporting if they’re weatherized, we know not all of the ERCOT grid is weatherized,” Hirs said.
“It doesn’t take a lot of units offline for something to happen.”