About once a year the weather in San Antonio gets cold enough for people to overreact and expect it to snow. But since January 1986, that hadn’t actually happened.
So when the weather forecast for Monday, Feb. 15, 2021, called for snow, it was hard to believe it would really happen. The predicted high was 30 degrees and the low was 14 degrees, with projections of freezing rain, sleet and maybe snow. Those kinds of numbers didn’t make sense.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), however, saw those numbers and was worried.
In Episode 11 of The Engines of Texanity, we talk about how during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, Texanity failed, and the frontier model of regulation left Texas isolated and literally out in the cold.
While every other U.S. state gets its electricity from federally regulated interstate grids, Texas’ size, abundant energy sources, and independent nature allowed it to develop its own self-regulated electric grid. ERCOT is the grid’s independent system operator. Inspired by the airline industry’s deregulation, Texas deregulated its electrical markets in 1999. ERCOT runs auctions every 15 minutes, allowing electricity producers to compete to supply the grid. The producer with the lowest price wins.
During the winter of 2021, ERCOT had 82,500 megawatts of reliable electrical power connected to the system on any given day — taking into account intermittent sources like wind and solar and any processing plants down for maintenance. Theoretically, it had a capacity of up to 119,000 megawatts. The average statewide daily demand was in the 40,000-megawatt range and the highest winter day demand ever experienced was about 69,000 megawatts.
As morning broke on Sunday, Feb. 14 — and freezing temperatures didn’t — ERCOT could tell problems were developing. Natural gas prices were climbing as power plants struggled to find the gas needed to produce electricity. Wind farms fell offline as winds died down and equipment began freezing. The sun stopped shining, cutting off the solar farms. ERCOT issued a voluntary appeal for conservation; Texans, however, cranked up their thermostats. By 7 p.m. a peak demand of 69,222 megawatts was reached — 20% higher than in worst-case projections. When ERCOT called for the 13,000 megawatts of electricity that should’ve been available, it didn’t show up.
At 12:15 a.m. on Monday morning, ERCOT declared a Level 1 Energy Emergency Alert, meaning power reserves were low and conservation was critical. By 1:20 a.m. a Level 3 alert was issued, meaning that to prevent a total blackout ERCOT started rolling outages, turning off power to entire parts of the state. Within a few hours, it had cut nearly 20,000 megawatts of electricity to about one third of the population, and continued to cut a few thousand more megawatts of power that evening.
By Tuesday, Feb. 16, with freezing temperatures and the rolling outages continuing, Texas was producing only 46.8% of the electricity that it nominally should have been capable of. It had nowhere to turn for help. Apart from the few cities on the state’s edges, like El Paso, Amarillo, Texarkana and Beaumont, the majority of Texas was completely disconnected from the rest of the U.S. electrical grid.
On Wednesday, Feb. 17, the biggest problem became apparent — the rolling blackouts were hitting the natural gas processing plants that supplied the power plants. Once ERCOT was able to prioritize electricity to those assets, the curve turned. Electricity production finally started to ramp up, although it took days for freezing temperatures to break and for service to be restored to most citizens.
ERCOT deserves plenty of blame for what happened during Winter Storm Uri. It had performed several worst-case scenario models: the wind not blowing, gas plants going offline and the load spike if all Texans used their heating. But it never modeled all problems happening at the same time. When Texans needed 76,000 megawatts of electricity to keep their homes warm, ERCOT was moving less than 50,000.
Winter Storm Uri became the second worst natural disaster in Texas history. The official estimate was 246 casualties — unofficially, more than 700. Did Texans’ sense of exceptionalism lead them to create a system that killed their own? The political and media class have enjoyed debating this question to distract from the nuanced discussion of what would have actually prevented the tragedy.
It’s painful when the lessons of history don’t work, but there are still lessons applicable to today. As a frontier society, Texas has had both the luxury and obligation to take what works and discard what doesn’t. This is evident in the examples we’ve shared throughout this podcast series: the first Lipan horseman in early Texas; the Spanish irrigation systems establishing government; Gail Borden’s food failures leading to condensed milk; the railroad transporting prosperity across Texas; Spindletop birthing the state’s oil boom; and Southwest Airlines fighting to fly across the Love Triangle.
At its best, Texas is living proof that pragmatism is the great virtue of a frontier society, the quality I believe has upheld Texans through centuries of violence, disease and change.
Click below to listen to Episode 11 of The Engines of Texanity.
