This morning I spoke with the CEO of Vistra Energy, a North Texas based energy company, who shared a very troubling account of our state’s and ERCOT’s response leading up to this week’s storm.
They also shared some of the commonsense, temporary actions they took to prepare for the storm that allowed their energy production units to perform much better than the companies who didn’t.
They told me their team began to sound alarms on February 9th when their meteorologist saw freezing temperatures in the forecast knowing Texas’ infrastructure was not built for much less than 10 degrees.
They alerted ERCOT immediately, as well as the Texas Railroad Commission and other state government officials.
By their account, no one seemed to react with the haste and urgency they believed necessary, and they emphasized that ERCOT’s projections of the power supply were far below the demand they were seeing.
While this weather, and perhaps rolling blackouts, was not preventable, the response by our state leaders did not meet the severity of the moment and lives were cut short because of it.
We knew this storm was coming well enough in advance to take commonsense actions, like the ones Vistra did, to salvage as much power as possible.
I’ll keep working to get answers and clarity on what happened as well as to fight for federal resources to help North Texas recover from this disaster.
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