Thread by @wesrap

ERCOT latest: rotating outages are over. Ongoing outages are now likely trees on power lines or broken equipment. #txlege #txwx

"As difficult as they were," the outages "served a purpose," ERCOT leadership says. #txlege #txwx

If ERCOT didn't take the action it took, "we'd be talking about when we might estimate, weeks or months from now, that we'd see the power system repaired," ERCOT CEO says. #txlege #txwx

"Texas can't afford for this to happen again," ERCOT CEO says, as hearings loom next week to discuss what happened and future prevention measures. #txlege #txwx

"We just got the notice from our control room that we have left in the last stage of emergency operations. So we are completely back to normal operation," ERCOT leader says. #txlege #txwx

ERCOT CEO doesn't think the weather forecast was "all that off."
"I don't think the forecast the demand was all that off" b/c seeing high demand. "We forecast generation really by just what generators tell us... they can do, what's available on the system..."

More: Generators "understood there was a big storm coming and needed all hands on deck and all power on the system. And that's what they were planning to provide, but the storm came in and lots of different issues occurred..."
#txlege #txwx

Did some TX cities have to increase percentage of load shed because other cities weren't able to rotate? "I don't think we have an answer to that." ERCOT says no data on that at this point. #txwx #txlege

"2021 certainly put the marker down for the kind of severe weather that we really had not seen," ERCOT CEO says, as Sr Ops director nods. "We're gonna have to examine you know everything about that, and then what implications that has for what we see in the future." #txlege #txwx

Response to Gov Abbott comment yesterday that "ERCOT failed," ERCOT CEO says legislative hearings & energy regulators examine "every step we took and whether it complied with the liability rules" (he might've said 'reliability' rules)
#txlege #txwx

With ERCOT moving out of emergency conditions, power conservation relating to this storm response no longer required at this time, ERCOT rep says. "I want to thank people who did." Tho conservation didn't prevent energy emergency, "it often has made a difference." #txlege #txwx

Any early estimates on costs to winterize generation equipment to prevent similar outages in future storms?
"That's data we don't really have," ERCOT says. "Not a part of the business that we go out and do..."

ERCOT says @GregAbbott_TX and @JohnCornyn helped get emergency order from US Dept of Energy to allow fed rules to be set aside during emergency conditions to allow "generation units to run at full power if they were able." #txlege #txwx

"We do not want this to happen again," ERCOT CEO says. "Any effort...wherever it happens... we're happy to participate in figuring out solutions that keep us from this sort of thing." #txlege #txwx