The Great Texas Electric Outage of 2021

The pundits are jumping on the bandwagon to give their solutions to the Great Texas Electric Outage of 2021. Having retired from the electric utility industry I too have my opinions and theories to the reasons for the outage. I am not an electric engineer but nearly 34 years in the business gives me some limited insight.

Let me say it’s important to understand the electricity metered to your home or business is actually a high quality product. It is generated at almost the same instance you use it and must meet quality specifications for voltage, cycles per second, and other parameters as outlined in the spec sheet for your appliances. (You can pick up your toaster and look at the specification plate. Mine is 120 volts, 60 cycle, and 750 watts).

Each electric distribution company has engineers on staff to monitor the quality of the electricity delivered to the meter. Should variances arise which would compromise the quality of the energy, every effort is made to correct the problem. The electric utilities have limited means locally to correct some problems.

Sometimes the problem is beyond the capability of the local utility and goes back to the generation companies or transmission grid. In these circumstances the local utility staff is unable to do anything.

Back in 2002 Texas launched into a deregulated environment. The utilities were broken apart similar to the old Ma Bell. Originally, the utilities were comprised of three parts; generation, distribution, and customer service or electric sales. When Texas passed Senate Bill 7 into law, the utilities were deregulated…for the most part.

Generation was broken off into separate entities. The local electric offices went away and were replaced with “Retail Electric Providers”. That is who you pay your electric bill to. The poles and wires companies which own the electric meters remain regulated to some degree and must answer to the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

Interesting, to my knowledge the Electric Cooperatives are not part of the deregulation movement. However, some draw power from the same grid as the other utilities.

The Retail Electric Providers source energy from the Generation Companies and wheel the power to customers over the utility lines.

It is important also to know that the Utility and Generation companies are controlled by ERCOT (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas).

Finally, I am not opposed to “green” energy. I was not aware until this outage that Texas has so much wind energy on the grid. It’s my understanding the Texas grid begin to fail after the wind turbines iced up and quit generating power. Just as the wings of an airliner must be free of ice before a flight, the windmill blades must be free of ice for maximum efficiency and reliability. We had no way to de-ice the windmill blades so the windmills went off line. Texas simply did not have enough backup power available and the electric grid went down. The remaining generators could not meet demand required by the grid. Remember, when the quality of the power begins to suffer (low voltages, etc.) it is really better for the power to be off rather than to do severe damage to the grid.

I have seen instances where wires melt to the ground, poles burn up, and transformers explode when things go wrong. It makes a real mess that is costly in time and materials.

Our house in Troy, Texas, was without power for around 60 hours. Fortunately, we had some firewood and a small propane camp stove to help is through.

In my humble opinion, the wind generation would have been fine in the cold weather had they not been iced over due to the freezing rain. It was one of those circumstances not anticipated. It is definitely a lesson learned by all and a mistake which will not be repeat again.

There will be an investigation into the Great Texas Electric Outage of 2021. I understand that the State of Texas will conduct an investigation into ERCOT and associated entities. I am sure that reprimands will be issued and some heads might roll.

However, based on my experience, it is better to be without electricity for a short time than to leave it on and cause major damage which can take days and weeks to repair.

Better a little inconvenience now than a lot of inconvenience later.

Again, this is my opinion.