The most important thing the PUC can do in 2024 to prevent winter outages

The most recent Arctic blast, happily, was a non-event for the ERCOT grid. It was bitter cold, but nowhere near what Texas saw during Winter Storm Uri in 2021, and there was very little snow or ice. 

But what about when we get the next Uri, or worse? We’d do better than we did in 2021, mostly because power plants are in better shape because of new PUC rules. We also have a lot more solar and storage on the system than we did then — as we just saw, that helps a ton.

But it’s highly likely that the current system would experience rolling outages under Uri-like conditions. The gas supply system, as just one example, is still extremely vulnerable to extreme winter weather…