The first step was admitting Texas’ electrical grid had a problem.
For years, state leaders sold a vision of the Lone Star State as a haven for power generators. Bring us your natural gas, your coal producers yearning for low taxes, low costs, and minimal regulation.
Then Winter Storm Uri swept across the state in February 2021, killing hundreds of people and leaving more than 4.5 million Texas homes and businesses without power for three days. The denial stage was over. State regulators were forced to reckon with the fact that our cherished independent grid had serious vulnerabilities. Chief among them: thermal energy producers who failed to adequately winterize; skimpy power reserves; and minimal state oversight over the utility market.
The next step was to fix it. Yet more than a year after the state launched a two-phase plan to make the grid more resilient and incentivize power generators to increase production before a future...
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Published on 12/8/2022 (54 days ago) General