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Reuters
The Texas Electricity Reliability Board, “Ercot,” said the US state of Texas was dangerously close to a long-term power outage during last week’s severe winter storm.
According to documents released during the emergency council meeting on Wednesday, the Texas network has come under much greater pressure than previously thought.
And in the most dangerous part of the night on February 14, when the storm hit the state, network operators were within four minutes and 37 seconds of a generalized “cut” that would have caused an automatic cut of certain electrical circuits.
Had that happened, millions of Texas customers would have experienced long-term outages because technicians would have had to “black start” their generation facilities. This could take weeks, leaving Texas in complete darkness.
Black start is the process of restoring the power plant or part of the power grid to function without relying on the external power transmission grid to recover from a full or partial shutdown. Generally, the electrical energy used within the station comes from the station’s generators.
The documents showed that half of the state’s power generation capacity was disrupted due to severe cold during the peak, and a large proportion of electricity generation stopped for more than 48 hours before power was restored. The city council said that most of the stations that stopped generating are natural gas.
As of Wednesday, six members of Ercot’s board of directors charged with managing most of the Texas power grid, which is largely isolated from the rest of the nation’s power grid, have resigned.
Last week, a severe winter storm caused a major blackout in the southern state. So far, dozens of deaths have been reported from severe weather.
Source: “Xinhua”
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