Head of Texas Energy Company Has No Thought When Tens of millions Will Get Electrical energy Again
The head of the agency that manages electricity in most of Texas seems to have no idea when the four million Texans without electricity will get it back, but he says the weather should improve soon.
Bill Magness, CEO of the Texas Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT), was asked directly, “When will the Texas blackouts be over?”
He couldn’t give a straight answer.
“The main task of everyone here at ERCOT is to turn people’s lights back on,” Magness told Jason Whitely from WFAA on Tuesday. “We see demand in winter much the same way we do at the beginning of summer, when we all use our air conditioning.”
“We honestly haven’t seen anything like it in Texas that covered the state like the storm did. It took demand to extreme, extraordinary levels, and then the storm made supplies difficult, too, ”he added.
ERCOT manages around 90 percent of the Texas power grid and sends electricity to 25 million customers (a customer can be a family of four, a company or a single person). This corresponds to his culture of wanting to separate from the US In the rest of the United States, according to the Texas Tribune, Texas has its own power grid “to avoid dealing with the government”.
That’s a big problem right now.
Magness also blamed ice-cold wind turbines and “natural gas supplies that were running low or solar parks that really couldn’t produce due to heavy cloud cover and snow”.
Temperatures have dropped below zero in parts of Texas.
The Texas Tribune reports that at least 10 deaths are related to the Texas disaster in Houston alone.
Governor Greg Abbott called it “unacceptable” and announced an investigation. Some wondered what preparations the state had made before the storm – which was no surprise -.
The AP reports that millions of Texans have been without power for more than 24 hours.
“The Texan network operators knew the massive storm,” which brought freezing cold, if not single-digit temperatures and snow.
In the meantime, Magness, the head of ERCOT, says, “I think we can see these customers get more and more service as this week goes on, but it just depends on how the weather turns and how much electricity is being supplied we can make sure is safe. “
Here is a report from Witelys Whitely after the interview:
Comments are closed.