Snowstorm Overwhelms Texas and Oklahoma

For a long time now, observers have worried that Texas’ grid could be brought to its knees by a severe weather event. The logic is simple: the lonestar state starting building up its wind portfolio at breakneck speed last decade and shutting coal plants. Simultaneously, demand has skyrocketed thanks to migration into cities like Austin. In the summer of 2019, during a nasty heatwave, the worst case scenario almost materialized. ERCOT, the state’s grid operator was forced to issue an Energy Emergency Alert. They got through by a thread, however, and never had to issue any blackouts. 

But ERCOT and Texas’ luck has run out. Monday, a big snowstorm hit east Texas and south east Oklahoma. The Dallas-Fort Worth airport got just over 4 inches of snow, the highest in a decade, and Oklahoma City got 6, respectively. Both states, accustomed to mild winters, have seen demand shoot up well past normal levels. At the same time, the cold and snow have incapacitated many gas lines and wind turbines. The effects have been disastrous: Millions of customers in both states were without power yesterday. 

ERCOT responded by issuing an emergency alert and pleading with customers to practice conservation. The operator also told transmission owners to cut 14,000 MW of load. As of yesterday afternoon, ERCOT has been unable to offer a prediction as to when the rolling outages will end. 

This situation has attracted the attention of both state and federal legislators. Yesterday, Texas Governor Greg Abbot directed the state legislature to investigate ERCOT and the outages. FERC and NERC also called for investigations. Formal inquiries will begin once power has been restored across the region. 

Both industry commentators and ERCOT spokespeople have continued to bring up the exceptionality of the weather event. On monday night, demand hit a record setting 69,150 MW, while the peak demand forecast for 2026/27 is just 67,512 MW. I won’t argue that the storm is normal, but shouldn’t operators be prepared for exceptional demand a couple times a year? 

Moving forward, it would seem to me that ERCOT will need to revise their peak demand forecasts, preparing for extreme weather events and increasing demand due to EVs and a growing population. However, even if predictions are more intelligent, the state still may have a generation dearth. It’s not as easy as pointing a finger at the state’s overreliance on unscalable wind, either. As I already mentioned, the great majority of generation lost during this event was gas. This seems like an easy problem to mitigate: outfit gas equipment for the cold. 

But regardless of how easy the specific lessons of this storm may be, it still seems there’s a larger and tricker pattern emerging across the industry. Over the past few years, operators have been caught off guard by surging demand: Through California and much of the west last summer, and now in Texas and Oklahoma. More extreme weather, changing demand patterns, and an awkward transition to renewables are all to blame. 

What’s the solution? I’m all ears.