The winter storm that hit Texas and other states has killed at least 80 people, but officials have said that an accurate death toll will take time to establish.
The board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday where the chief executive was forced to apologise, conceding his company « could have done a better job » after severe blackouts hit the southern state during its coldest winter in over 30 years. The winter storm that hit Texas and other states on February 13 has killed at least 80 people, according to the Wall Street Journal, but officials have said that the full death toll will take time to establish. Millions lost power and experienced water shortages as 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius) temperatures caused widespread disruption. ERCOT, which manages around 90 percent of the state’s electricity, has been under fire in recent days, as residents of the state have brought lawsuits against it for failing to provide power during freezing temperatures. Texas is one of the few U.S. states to have an independent energy grid. ERCOT’s CEO, Bill Magness, faced questions on Wednesday from other board members about why the power outrages were so severe and why his company failed to foresee such a deadly outcome. In the emergency meeting, Magness showed slides revealing that 48.6 percent of the power generators in the state shut down at the peak of the outages. « I mean, we saw something here that, you know, outstrips any extreme scenario, » said Magness. « This is the kind of thing that, you know moves the goalposts, number one, so that we have to know that we could see in other February 2021, event when we look at extremes, » he added. A fifth ERCOT board member resigned on Wednesday, after four others said they would step down the previous day. A sixth has withdrawn his application from the board. All of them live outside Texas. Board chair Sally Talberg; vice chair Peter Cramton, finance and audit chair Terry Bulger, and human resources and governance committee chair Raymond Hepper, all stepped down after the Wednesday meeting.
