With the weather warming up and freezing temperatures behind us, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas ended emergency conditions on Friday morning.
ERCOT held a media update 10:30 a.m. Friday on the situation. Around 10:38 a.m., they announced the emergency conditions were formally rescinded, marking a return to normalcy.
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Since overnight Monday, millions of Texans were out of power due to controlled outages to keep the state’s power grid stable.
The winter storm did not only lead to an unprecedented demand for power, but it also knocked several sources of power offline. If grid operators did not order the controlled outages across the state, officials said we were only minutes away from a devastating blackout that could have taken months to repair.
ERCOT officials said roughly 40% of their power generation was downed by the storm.
“Those outages served a purpose, as difficult as they were,” ERCOT CEO Bill Magness said.
Despite the good news from ERCOT on ending emergency conditions, there are still thousands of Texans without power across the state. Those customers remain out of power due to issues like ice storm damage or are in need of a manual reconnection to receive power again.
ERCOT recommends customers without power call their electric provider to get the latest information on their outage.
Now, the grid managing group will turn its attention to solutions, Magness said. He welcomed the emergency items announced by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who instructed the state legislature to take up ERCOT reform issues.
Part of the objectives include mandatory winterization of power generators and modernization of the grid.
“Texas can’t afford having this happen again,” Magness said.
According to ERCOT, 34,000 megawatts of power remain on forced outage due to the weather.
“Of that, nearly 20,000 is thermal generation and the rest is wind and solar,” according to the press release.
It may still take days for a complete recovery.