Thread by @wesrap

In briefing, ERCOT: If power supply & demand too far out of balance it risks "cascading catastrophic blackout" not an outage that we can restore as soon as power plants work again, but blackout affecting entire ERCOT region, w/ "no kind of indeterminate end date" #txlege #txwx

"As the weather begins to warm, then the demand comes down and as demand comes down, that's another way that you can establish that balance, but avoid the total catastrophic blackout that we're avoiding," ERCOT CEO says. #txlege #txwx

ERCOT senior ops director: As generation is avail—utilizing it to the max amount possible to restore consumers ASAP & if ERCOT has to increase outages "that's not okay but it still allows them to be served for some interim period & so we think that's beneficial." #txlege #txwx

Why does TX import some power from Midwest (& elsewhere) given that TX operates its own grid? ERCOT sr ops director: "There are a limited number of direct current ties that allows a specific amount of power to be transferred between Texas and other grids"
#txwx #txlege

On calls for ERCOT resignations by Gov Abbott & others, CEO says "whatever the future holds, the priority for us now is to get the power back on."
"Obviously, this has been a tremendously difficult situation..." assessment should be done "after we get power back on" #txlege #txwx

ERCOT CEO stands behind decision to cut power to prevent load on the grid.
#txlege #txwx

ERCOT: Best case is that today/tmrw able to keep consumer outages to "that are no longer than say 30 minutes to an hour at a time, so we're actually rotating through people..." #txlege #txwx

"I don't think it's likely that we're going to have enough available based on our forecast and the information that we're getting in from the generators that we're going to have everybody back on today or before at least the morning peak tomorrow," ERCOT says. #txlege #txwx

Weatherization? ERCOT: After 2011 event & investigation, generators developed best practices. ERCOT spot checked voluntary guidelines at 100 of 600 units. 2018 storm—"very few issues," so appeared practices worked. Apparently not sufficient enough for last few days. #txlege #txwx

On Gov Abbott criticism of liberal Green New Deal as reasoning for need to double down oil & gas-- ERCOT says all types of energy generators were impacted by this cold weather & snow. #txlege #txwx

Are restored homes keeping power on? ERCOT: trying to balance generation. May be able to reduce overall aggregate amount but then increase it back up. How that relates to individual consumers is a function of how transmission owners meet the overall reduction. #txlege #txwx

Why didn't ERCOT mandate winterization changes to power generators? ERCOT says that's not its role to require. #txlege #txwx

What source of energy creating biggest issue right now? ERCOT: Working to get generation units back online, and "those generation units that came offline in the extraordinary weather were of all types."
#txlege #txwx

COVID-19 impact on ERCOT operations? ERCOT: Only did 94 spot checks for voluntary guideline compliance (instead of typical 100) and did them all virtually. ERCOT was "able to walk through kind of making sure that people were doing what they needed to do that way." #txlege #txwx

ERCOT: If the weather warms up & generation comes back on, "it goes a lot more quickly than it has been moving so far." Optimistic "we can get through this" if generation comes online in quantity needed. #txlege #txwx

Something I did not hear-- a specific timeline for when ERCOT can get the power back on across the state. #txlege #txwx