Energy Update: Week of May 10
Forum Looks at Texas Power Issues – On Wednesday at 1:00 pm., R Street holds a forum [2] to explore the Texas power crisis and its impacts on wholesale power market design questions. Former ERCOT board member Peter Crampton and R St.’s Beth Garza discuss.
Endnotes
“forum”: https://www.rstreet.org/event/lessons-learned-from-texas-what-can-we-do-to-better-weather-the-extreme-weather
Denton paid $210M for electricity during February winter storm. They had budgeted $83.3M for the year
Denton Municipal Electric is suing ERCOT over what it says is an unconstitutional raid on the credit of it and other cities. Author: Tanya Eiserer, Jason Trahan Published: 8:00 PM CDT May 6, 2021 Updated: 8:35 PM CDT May 6, 2021
DENTON, Texas The city of Denton’s power plant was running strong during February’s winter storms, burning natural gas to make electricity.
Then came the call.
The plant’s supplier was cutting off its natural gas. The supplier didn’t explain why.
“My jaw dropped,” said Antonio Puente, Denton Municipal Electric’s general manager. “We all understood what that meant, and the fact that that we were going to be exposed to very high prices.”
Texas lessons – the interconnected utility ecosystem
The February extreme cold weather snap in Texas highlighted the interconnectedness of the electric and gas systems, says US energy policy expert Beth Garza.
Speaking in Enlit Europe’s grid series webinar on resilience and flexibility [1], Garza said what began as a major winter storm with traffic problems and snarled highways turned into an electricity problem for about a week and then into a water crisis for another week.
…
“It has highlighted the tremendous interconnection between our electricity and natural gas systems, how dependent they are on each other and how ill prepared they were to interact with each other,” said Garza, Senior Fellow at the policy research R Street Institute and former Independent Market Monitor for the ERCOT wholesale markets.
Event: Shedding Light on the Legislative Response to the Texas Blackouts
The February blackouts in Texas left millions in the dark and the financial implications will continue to reverberate for years. Since that time, we have seen a flurry of resignations and of legislative proposals to deal with the fallout and prevent it from happening again.
Moderator: Josiah Neeley, Director, Texas; Resident Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Panelists:
Beth Garza, Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Katie Coleman, Texas Industrial Electric Consumers
Endnotes
Inside Clean Energy: Some Straight Talk about Renewables and Reliability
A former watchdog for Texas’ grid operator speaks out on legislation that would penalize wind and solar.
April 22, 2021
Blades from a wind turbine rotate in a field, April 16, 2021 near Eldorado, Texas. Credit: Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images
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Five hours into a Texas legislative hearing this month, it was Beth Garza’s turn to talk. Anybody who had dozed off was about to wake up.
Garza approached the lectern and gave her credentials. She was, until 2019, the director of the office that serves as the public watchdog for the nonprofit company that runs the state’s electricity grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.