As temperatures plummeted below freezing for 10 straight days and snow and ice blanketed Texas, all eyes turned to the state’s power grid to understand how 4.5 million Texan customers could lose electricity at once.
Frigid temperatures wreaked havoc on Texas’ natural gas, nuclear and coal plants, as well as wind turbines that struggled to operate during the storm. Many have blamed the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the energy grid operator for 90% of the state, for its failure to upgrade and winterize equipment to better withstand subfreezing temperatures.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that what happened during February’s ice storm was “completely unacceptable,” and Dallas Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchía called the catastrophe a “massive failure” and a clear signal that Texas needs a more resilient power system that “can respond to ever-increasing extreme weather.”
During the past year, a team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin has been working on a project that could help with that, using advanced modeling to predict when certain electrical substations — which convert high-voltage electricity from power plants and other big generators to a lower voltage for distribution to homes — will be thrown offline during an extreme weather event. The goal is to help design a better, more resilient system by assisting energy companies, policymakers and state agencies in planning infrastructure investments during the next decade.
The team has been focused on flooding from major hurricanes — something more common in Texas.
But now, they are considering how the model could be tweaked to improve the state’s power grid in the face of a winter storm — something that could become more common as a result of climate change, says project lead Erhan Kutanoglu, an associate professor of operations research and industrial engineering.
