More than 4 million Texans lost power after a storm paralyzed the state’s energy infrastructure over the weekend.
The storm, which declared Governor Greg Abbott a nationwide disaster on Friday, resulted in at least 25 deaths, most of them in Texas, a state whose energy infrastructure was not built for a storm of this magnitude. . At least two were killed in a household attempt to warm up by driving their car into their garage, leading to carbon monoxide poisoning.
“It was an extraordinary event for Texas,” said Bill Magness, chief executive officer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees about 90 percent of Texas’ energy production and has ordered interruptions by the state. do.
“This one went from top to bottom and through, with very cold temperatures, icy rain, snow like we had not seen in decades,” he said in a telephone interview. “We knew we were going to get in, it would put extraordinary demands on the electrical system.”
CenterPoint Energy, which serves the Houston area, announced Tuesday that the targeted disruptions, which currently affect 1.27 million people, “could take a few more days.”
Texas has been plagued by single-digit temperatures, snow and sleet since Thursday, and more is expected. In the Dallas area, Tuesday temperatures are below zero, the coldest temperature since 1949, with extra rainfall Wednesday.
Historically, the days of Texas’ high energy demands have always been in the summer, Magness said. “We saw demand forecasts that were close to a summer peak,” he said. The state’s two largest sources, natural gas and non-hydroelectric renewable energy, such as wind turbines and solar power, were all severely hampered by the winter storm.
“In winter, it is more difficult to get natural gas supplies because they are much more in demand for domestic heating and use it that way,” he said. Severe winds and snow mixed with natural gas equipment and frozen wind turbines, and the cloudy weather drastically slowed down solar panel production, he said.
The problems are exacerbated because Texas, the largest energy producer and consumer in the United States, is the only state to use its own power grid. That frees it from federal regulations, including those that could require it to be better prepared for a freak cold moment, said Peter Fox-Penner, founder of Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy.
“Texas’ deregulation philosophy has led to much less stringent rules on generators and system operators to be prepared for cold weather than other systems, where extreme cold is more common,” he said in an interview.
“They believed this kind of ‘perfect storm’ was so unlikely that they did not need to prepare the system for it,” Fox-Penner said.
The one-two blows of the storm and sudden power outages caused widespread damage throughout the state.
For the Fagan Family Farms, a small independent farm with organic produce in Kyle, Texas, lost produce due to the cold was bad enough, but the power outage was devastating. Shawn Fagan, owner Shawn Fagan, raised about $ 20,000 in lettuce in the electrically heated greenhouse – and it’s all lost now.
“I raised the next generation in the greenhouse,” he said by telephone. “Not only do I have nothing in the field, I also have nothing to put in the field now.”