The PUC controls Ercot.
Ercot is an acronym for Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
The emphasis is on Electric Reliability. Did we achieve that by the way the PUC and Ercot handled the design and operation of the Texas grid last week?
Are you seriously suggesting otherwise?
Damn right we need accountability. My mother almost died in a nursing home that lost power and heat last week due to negligence by the authorities in the composition of the electric grid we use.
This is not the fault of an engineer which designed the system.
It is the fault of political decisions made that did not recognize consequences of those decisions.
Very sorry to hear of your mother's experience
@IsailedawayfromFR, and I hope she is resting comfortably now.
No, the grid certainly was not reliable last week and I agree that the fundamental failure is in political decisions, but it's not clear to me that those decision failures were by the PUC or by ERCOT. The grid failed because it is not winterized, it's not winterized because there is no regulatory requirement that it be winterized, and there is no regulatory requirement because TX rarely sees the temperatures we experienced last week.
It is not my understanding that ERCOT has the authority to order generators, transmission companies, and pipeline operators to winterize. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I haven't seen it reported anywhere that ERCOT is accountable for regulating the physical maintenance of the grid. ERCOT is accountable to monitor the balance between generation capacity and power demand, and they did that.
Does the PUC have the authority to order winterization? I don't know, perhaps they do. But the organization that unquestionably DOES have that authority is the TX State Legislature. When the law is inadequate, it's the job of law makers, not executives, to make the law adequate, either by direct legislation or by delegating authority for administrative law to an appropriate agency. I don't want appointees to commissions and boards asserting the right to make law and I'm pretty sure you don't either.
So yes, it's fundamentally a political issue, but the undergraduate majors of the PUC members and the home mailing addresses of the ERCOT board are irrelevant distractions. PUC and ERCOT can only operate within the authority they have been given by the legislature and I haven't seen it documented anywhere that either of them have been given the authority to order winterization of grid assets.