Power plant woes prompt changes

Feb 15 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Tom Fowler Houston Chronicle

Texas' main electric grid operator already has begun making changes in how it will handle situations like the Feb. 2 power emergency that led to rolling blackouts in much of the state, the organization's CEO said Monday.

An e-mail alert system designed to warn of escalating problems didn't reach all the parties that it should have in time, partly because the emergency came to a head overnight, Electric Reliability Council of Texas CEO Trip Doggett told the ERCOT board of directors.

The warning system now includes more automation, with messages sent directly from ERCOT's control room instead of via third parties.

ERCOT also is developing an improved communication plan that will use social media to spread information, a phone bank to get more staff able to field media calls, and easier access to real-time grid data on its website.

Marcie Zlotnik, an ERCOT board member who is also chief operating officer of Houston-based electric retailer StarTex Power, said she feels comfortable with how ERCOT's staff handled the emergency and averted a statewide blackout. But Zlotnik said that's because of the level of information she can get as a board member.

"When people aren't informed, as was the case for most of the people out there, perception is all that matters, and the perception is that there was a ton of confusion and ERCOT didn't know what it was doing," Zlotnik said.

The Feb. 2 emergency was sparked by the unprecedented failure of dozens of power plants as subfreezing weather hit most of the state, Doggett said. Most of the failures happened early in the morning.

Between 5:08 a.m. and 5:43 a.m., the emergency status of the grid jumped three levels, leading to the call for rolling blackouts. That rapid escalation made it hard to alert the media or officials.

ERCOT has asked the operators of the power plants that went down unexpectedly during the power emergency to allow it to identify the plants publicly. On Monday afternoon ERCOT was still sorting the responses, but Doggett shared a few details.

While 8,000 megawatts was the peak outage, over the course of the day 82 power plants with a combined generating capacity of 11,000 megawatts went off line.

Forty percent of the plants that went down were powered by coal, 59 percent by natural gas and 1 percent by wind.

There was no clear pattern in the plants' age or locations, Doggett said, and plants failed throughout the state.

While some natural gas-fired plants had problems with fuel supplies due to the cold, Doggett said the emergency wasn't caused by gas curtailment. He said wind power units and nuclear power plants produced at levels they were expected to.

Many shutdowns were due to the failure of equipment monitoring different aspects of the plants, such as temperatures, pressures and water levels, as well as the failure of some control systems.

tom.fowler@chron.com