Texas’ Winter Storm Reveals Flaws in the Grid

On February 10th, 2021, the National Weather Service in Austin/San Antonio began issuing advisories for a winter storm moving into the Central Texas Area. Initially, freezing rain was forecasted for the hill country area over the south-central portion of the state as forecast models were still trying to interpret climatological data. Within 24 hours of the first advisory, freezing rain began affecting over half the state, and by the weekend of the 12th, conditions rapidly declined.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is the independent grid system operator for the state. Texas is unique in that it has its own electrical grid, unlike the rest of the states in the lower 48 which are divided up between the Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection.

ERCOT is not an energy producer, instead, its job is to monitor and regulate the power across the grid produced by a variety of private and governmental power producers. Much like an air traffic controller monitoring airspace for planes to land, take off, and fly safely, ERCOT does the same balancing act with the Texas grid. It is a careful balancing act using real-time monitoring and forecasted load predictions.

Above: The first round of the winter storm brought freezing rain to Texas, coating powerlines in thick coats of ice and causing state-wide outages.

By the evening hours of Valentine’s Day, ERCOT was issuing warnings of increased load capacity and the possibility of rolling blackouts, and it wasn’t long after ERCOT went into an Energy Emergency Alert 3 when over 30,000 MW of electrical power was forced off the grid. At this point, ERCOT was struggling to maintain control and was having to draw power from outside its grid system.

As the storm system moved west to east, ERCOT reported the freezing of wind generating turbines in the northern part of the state creating a significant drop in power production; however, ERCOT said this was offset by wind generation plants in the coastal plains as winds were stronger than normal. Almost immediately, people began pointing fingers at green energy resources, stating it was the freezing turbines to blame for the rolling blackouts occurring state-wide, but this was not painting a full picture of what was going on.

During the Obama administration, many coal plants in Texas either shuttered or switched to natural gas as stricter emission standards were put in place. In addition to the mandates, natural gas is a much cheaper form of fuel than coal, and with new turbine technology, natural gas is more efficient. Despite this, the harsh arctic blast and frozen precipitation created issues at natural gas wells and distribution sites.

Texas Governor Abbott was quoted by the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) in its February 16, 2021 Situation Report (SitRep), “Unfortunately, some of those [electrical] generators are unable to increase production at this time because their operations have been frozen by weather conditions.” Although Abbott specifically referred to the power generators as having their operations frozen by the storms. The Texas Tribune reported on February 16th, nearly one-half of Texas’ natural gas production had ceased production as the gas wells and distribution facilities had frozen.

The Texas Tribune article also reported that ERCOT Senior Director, Dan Woodfin, acknowledged more than half the winter generating capacity was offline, accounting for nearly 45 gigawatts of electricity being removed from the Texas grid. Adding insult to injury, various media outlets began reporting Unit 1 of the South Texas Nuclear Power Station had shut down, accounting for approximately 1,300 megawatts being dropped.

Above: An electrical transmission line passes by a couple of water towers in Bastrop, TX.

Texas’ power problems began taking an immediate toll on critical infrastructures, especially for water and wastewater treatment plants that were not prepared for temperatures hovering in the single digits and below. As blackouts occurred, water plant operators found their generators would not start because of issues related to the extreme cold. Without auxiliary power, these stations were unable to heat their pumps, causing them to freeze, leaving many Texas residents without power and water!

Electricity was not the only emergency Texas was facing during this time either. At one point every Texas County was under a Winter Storm Warning. From Brownsville to Amarillo and El Paso to the Louisiana border, the winter storm closed roads statewide due to icing, bringing transportation to a halt. Stores such as Texas’ largest supermarket chain, H.E.B., began closing their stores as power was out, employees were unable to safely get to work, and supply trucks were unable to resupply stores.

Above: With major grocery stores closed, customers flocked to neighborhood stores for supplies.

As with any disaster, panic began setting in, and as soon as the roads were somewhat drivable, unprepared people began descending on the already depleted stores. In some communities, gas stations began running out of fuel as supply trucks were still unable to safely navigate the roads. To complicate matters, even more, the forecast for the remainder of the week calls for two more rounds of frozen precipitation, prompting more winter storm warnings, and keeping electrical usage in high demand.

Although the weekend forecast already shows temperatures warming up to the 60s, which is a bit more typical for Texas weather this time of year, the great winter storm of 2021 (which has since been named Winter Storm Uri), foreshadows the extreme vulnerability of our electrical grid.

In 2018 and 2019, the United States Air Force’s Air University hosted the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force (EMDTF) to discuss and brainstorm ways to protect our nation’s electrical grid. Even with the main focus being a defense against an electromagnetic weapon or natural phenomenon to the nation's grid, the importance of any failure of the electrical grid was quickly realized, and many of the concerns during these conferences began to play out in a relatively short amount of time in Texas.

Other programs, such as the Joint-Base San Antonio Electromagnetic Defense Initiative follow in the footsteps of the EMDTF, and are looking at ways to prepare, and quickly recover, from an incident that could bring down an electrical grid.

Over the last 5 years, cyberattacks have been increasing on critical infrastructure, and on February 5, 2021, an unknown hacker used remote windows access software to gain access to the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system and began to remotely dump a potentially lethal amount of sodium hydroxide into the drinking water system of a Florida town before the process was interrupted by alert staff.

What would happen if ERCOT or a power plant was hacked causing an unexpected fluctuation in the Texas grid? What would happen if long-term damage to power plants and related infrastructure occurred? How long would the grid be down? How would it affect supply chains, not to mention what would the economic impact be? We can already get a glimpse into the answer to these questions just based on the few days Texas has had rolling blackouts, and it is not promising.

Upgrading our grid is an expensive enterprise and ensuring backup systems for critical infrastructure is equally expensive. Cost is often the reason many legislative efforts fail. Critics of grid resiliency often compare legislative efforts as tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists overreacting about some elaborate sci-fi event. In reality, the economic loss would most likely surpass the cost of even moderate grid resiliency upgrades and redundant systems. Without power, we lose communication, logistics, and core resources such as hospitals, water treatment plants, and other critical services we take for granted.

Just like hurricanes and other localized natural disasters, we find most Americans are ill-prepared to ride out any catastrophic event for more than one day. This is evident by the long lines at stores and the panic buying within 24 hours of any predictable event and Winter Storm Uri proved no different.

What happens when the unpredictable happens state-wide or nation-wide without any warning? Shockingly, most people believe it is the government’s responsibility to provide the supplies to everyone after the event occurs. Ready.gov,  the United States’ official page for citizen emergency preparedness, recommends a minimum of 3-day supplies of food and water for each person in the household. The website also states you may be on your own for several days in a disaster before help arrives. A 3-day supply is the minimum recommendation and depending on where you live to have a week-plus worth of supplies may be prudent.

At some point in time, a large area of the U.S. will be affected by a long-term grid outage. With our growing dependency on technology, the grid is part of our survival in the U.S., and if it was to go down for an extended period, the damage may be irreversible.