AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott promised Texans on Tuesday that its power grid is ready for this week's winter storm that's expected to sweep across the state.
In a news conference with officials from various state agencies in Austin, Abbott said that ERCOT, the organization that operates Texas' power grid, is "well-prepared" and "remains flexible in order to be responsive to meet power needs."
"ERCOT is using a conservative approach to grid management and '[power] forecast' to make sure they are prepared," Abbott said.
Abbott explained that ERCOT has a "power forecast" that predicts the amount of power demand. Per that forecast, he said ERCOT is expecting the highest demand to be on Friday morning.
"[ERCOT predicts] an excess of 15,000 megawatts of power will be available even at the time of highest demand," he said.
After winter storm Uri hit Texas just less than one year ago, both Abbott and state lawmakers promised there would be changes to prevent mass blackouts from happening again.
Officials promised power generators would be required to weatherize and, so far, it appears they have followed through.
"At least 99%, if not more, of power generators in the state of Texas have passed inspection or are fully operational," Abbott said.
The Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas received ERCOT's final winter weatherization report for the season in December. According to the ERCOT report, 321 of 324 electric generating units and transmission infrastructures passed the new winterization rules examination.
Another improvement: The Public Utility Commission assured reporters Tuesday that no power generators would be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance when the state needs them the most.
"In the last week or so we have worked with our generators to make sure any maintenance was conducted preemptively so all resources will be available to operate during this weather event," PUC Chairman Peter Lake said.
Officials are also working to ensure natural gas producers can continue to operate during the storm. During Uri, some of those producers had their power shut off by power transmission companies because they were not designated as critical infrastructure. That left some power plants without fuel and made the deficit of electricity even worse. Now the state is making sure those producers are recognized as "critical infrastructure" in the future.
"Last winter there were only 60 facilities in Texas designated as critical infrastructure. Now there are more than 1,500 facilities designated as critical infrastructure and many of those are these natural gas facilities," Abbott said. "A lot of what happened last year has been corrected by that critical infrastructure component."
PUC Chairman Peter Lake also said power plants will also have additional fuel on site, as well as repair crews standing by, just in case there are fuel interruptions or other issues.
Abbott said it is still possible there will be power outages that are not related to the state's power grid.
"(There) could be many reasons why they are out of power like downed power lines," he said. "Same thing could happen during the winter storm, ice on lines, ice on trees and trees fall on lines ... that doesn't mean there are challenges within the power grid."
Instead, he said that's a challenge local electric companies will be handling.
“But know that your local power company ... is working to make sure that power will be restored quickly, even though there may not be a problem with the Texas power grid itself," Abbott said.
Watch the news conference below:
