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ERCOT: Close to 2,000 generator outages reported during Texas winter storm

By Rod Walton, Power Engineering and POWERGEN+ content director

Hundreds of Texas-based electric generation units reported nearly 2,000 outage events during the February winter storm, according to a new report from grid system operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

The ERCOT report this week lists each generation unit from an owner that approved release of the information. The list runs more than 20 pages long and included mostly wind, gas-fired, solar and coal-fired resources.

The lion’s share of outages reported by generators happened between Feb. 14-19 as snow, ice and temperatures below zero challenged the electric power and delivery system. ERCOT has been roundly criticized by Texas customers and its political class, with CEO Bill Magness fired and numerous board members resigning in the wake of the crisis.

“The outage information in the attached list is ordinarily confidential for 60 days after each applicable operating day,” the ERCOT release reads. “However, in anticipation of requests for this information from the Legislature and the Public Utility Commission of Texas, ERCOT issued a notice to its market participants on February 22, requesting that each Resource Entity authorize ERCOT to publicly disclose its generator outage information notwithstanding the 60-day confidentiality rule so as to facilitate any necessary public discussion of these outages by the Legislature or other government authorities.”

Read more of PE’s coverage of the ERCOT-Texas winter storm grid meltdown

Numerous utilities or other power generators opted to not allow that information disclosed, but that omission does not mean they had an outage, the ERCOT letter reads.

Wind and natural gas make up most of the Texas electric generation resource mix, so those facilities dominate the outage list. Utility-scale wind sites which reported numerous outage situations included Grandview, Santa Cruz, Dermott, Bull Creek and many others.

Among the scores of gas-fired plant outages, Kiamichi Energy, Leon Creek and Wolf Hollow are among an almost incalculable number of sites knocked offline at multiple times. The Amoco Oil cogeneration plants and others like it also reported generator outage events, according to the ERCOT report.

Overall, some 52 GW of ERCOT territory generation capacity was lost during the storm, causing outages lasting days, burst pipes and some deaths. Natural gas-fired plants accounted for 27 GW, or more than half of total capacity, while utility-scale wind lost some 18 GW, or 57 percent of that resource capacity, according to ERCOT.

Coal, solar and nuclear also went offline, with the latter two only losing 12 and 13 percent of system capacity, the record shows.

The lost generation forced rolling blackouts and load shedding to cope with the imbalance of supply and demand during the extremely cold weather. Any further loss of grid frequency could have tripped more generation plants offline and led to a total system failure, according to reports.

The ERCOT system oversees most of Texas and is not connected to larger grid interconnections, such as the Eastern and Western Interconnections. Several reports have drawn parallels to the 2011 grid outages and rolling blackouts, but noted that the earlier event is dwarfed by the massive scale of the latest system failure.

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Rod Walton

(Rod Walton is content director for Power Engineering, POWERGEN International and the virtual POWERGEN+ series. He is a 35-year veteran of journalism and 13-year reporter and writer covering the energy industry. He can be reached at 918-831-9177 and [email protected]. If you have ideas for stories or content sessions about the power generation industry, you can reach out to Walton.)

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