The PUC held a workshop Friday, and while I've never watched a Politburo meeting, they likely have a similar feel. 

Electric companies lined up and, one after the other, said they're "ready for winter." When one company representative failed to say the scripted magic words, he was reminded by the PUC Chair of his omission, to which he replied, "We are preparing, and we will be ready."

Feel better? Me neither.

The Biggest Problems Weren’t Even Discussed

Beyond the sheer annoyance of repetitive, performative, perfunctory attestations, the meeting didn’t address some of the most important issues Texas faces this winter. There was not a single mention of the definitive post-Uri report or its 28 recommendations made two years ago by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, several of which have not been acted upon at all…

Texas policymakers have consistently neglected demand side solutions. They talk about them but they haven’t done much of anything to reduce demand even though it’s been obvious to everyone paying attention that demand side solutions are necessary.

The latest example broke last week. ERCOT is trying to find 3,000 megawatts of “zombie power plants” to bring back from the dead. 

It’s clear that this isn’t adequate. The CEO of CPS Energy, the utility with several of the units ERCOT wants to bring back from the dead, said as much: “It’s been five years since we’ve run it. There’s no way we can bring it back in four months.”

Texans won’t have a reliable grid until leaders prioritize demand reductions at least as much as additional supply…

Within about four years, the total electricity stored in electric vehicles in Texas will equal the entire capacity of the ERCOT power grid.

Electric vehicles are now one out of every eight cars purchased in the world and about one in 20 in Texas. More than 179,000 Texans now own electric vehicles. And EVs have an average battery capacity of 67kWh. So right now, at the very dawn of this boom, Texans now have 12,000 megawatts of power sitting in their garages. That’s enough to power the entire Houston area for an hour.

Two years have passed since Winter Storm Uri plunged Texas into darkness — yet policymakers are still far from ensuring a reliable grid. There are a multitude of reasons for this. For instance, Texas hasn’t done nearly enough to winterize power plants, gas supply, or homes and buildings.

But the biggest problem may simply be one of vision: policymakers aren’t seeing — or, at least, aren’t acknowledging — that there are a multitude of grid challenges facing them, and, by necessity, they will require varied solutions. No single answer will solve them.