Nine months after the Texas freeze, energy experts say the power grid remains vulnerable largely because new regulations allowed too much wiggle room for companies to avoid weatherization improvements. Published in partnership with the TexasTribune
MIDLOTHIAN, Texas — After last winter’s freeze hamstrung the flow of electricity to millions of customers from one big Texas utility, the company’s CEO, Curt Morgan, said he’d never seen anything like it in his 40 years in the energy industry.
An employee of Vistra Corp.’s Midlothian Power Plant in Midlothian, Texas, adjusts the wiring of a power unit Oct. 15. Energy providers like Vistra are preparing their plants for extreme weather after the February winter storm.No matter what Morgan does, however, it won’t be enough to prevent another disaster if there is another severe freeze, he said.
“Why couldn’t we get it?” Morgan asked recently. “Because the gas system was not weatherized. And so we had natural gas producers that weren’t producing.” The power and gas industries say they are working to make their systems more reliable during winter storms, and the Public Utility Commission, the state agency that regulates the power industry,on recommendations that federal regulators made a decade ago after another severe winter storm.
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