The state power grid operator has been run by an interim chief since the previous CEO was fired following the deadly 2021 winter storm that crashed much of the grid.

Texas is about to get very hot with the weather forecasted to hit triple digits this weekend in many areas across the state, including San Antonio.

The board overseeing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the independent nonprofit entity that operates and manages the electricity grid that covers much of Texas, named former executive Brad Jones on Tuesday to be interim president and CEO.

Phelan’s office called the proposals the “first phase” of the House’s proposed reforms in the wake of the winter storm. Greg Abbott, who has called on lawmakers to reform ERCOT and require — and fund — the winterization of the Texas power system. The legislation would replace the board’s “unaffiliated” members with members appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker. The bill would also mandate that all board members live in Texas. For example, retroactively equipping power plants and the state's energy system to withstand cold temperatures is likely to be very difficult and costly, energy experts have said.

Bill Magness, CEO of ERCOT, listens to proceedings at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 26, 2021. Bill Magness, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas CEO who was terminated by his board Wednesday, said he will not seek or accept severance pay, according to a spokesperson. According to the terms of his employment contract, his severance pay would have been equivalent to one year of his current base salary, which is more than $800,000. Magness, who endured more than five hours of questioning by state senators on Thursday, was criticized for the organization’s winter storm preparations. “Fired ERCOT leader refuses more than $800,000 severance pay in storm aftermath” was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/04/Texas-ercot-leader-bill-magness-fired-severance-pay/ by The Texas Tribune.

AUSTIN, Texas – The Electric Reliability Council of Texas will have a subcommittee meeting on Thursday morning, a day after CEO Bill Magness was fired. The Reliability and Operations Subcommittee is expected to address a variety of concerns, such as the state’s power generators, in the meeting. In the wake of February’s deadly blackouts that left millions of people without electricity and heat for days in subfreezing temperatures. Magness became the second senior official to depart the power grid. AdAt the Texas Capitol last week, lawmakers investigating the outages laid into Magness for his handling of the storm.

(AP Photo/Eric Gay)ERCOT CEO and president Bill Magness will be removed from his position in 60 days, according to an announcement by the ERCOT Board of Directors on Wednesday. According to a statement by the ERCOT Board of Directors­­­­­­­­, members met and directed the corporate secretary to “exercise the 60 days termination notice to ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness pursuant to the employment agreement with ERCOT.”The board said Magness will continue to serve as president and CEO of ERCOT during the 60-day period and work with state leaders and regulators on potential reforms to ERCOT. “The ERCOT Board is expected to begin an immediate search for a new President and CEO, and will continue to discuss the transition plan at future meetings during this time period,” the board said in a statement to KSAT. In late February, following the winter storm that left millions across the state without power, six ERCOT board members resigned, including the director who acknowledged the “pain and suffering” that Texans experienced during the statewide power outages. Read also:Resigning ERCOT board members acknowledge “pain and suffering” from extreme power grid strain that caused outages for millions of TexansPolitical contributions link ERCOT board to Abbott and the state committee now investigating the troubled entityGriddy customers moved to other electricity providers after ERCOT boots it from Texas market

Credit: Texas A&M Smart Grid CenterSign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. The board overseeing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the independent nonprofit entity that operates and manages the electricity grid that covers much of Texas, fired ERCOT CEO Bill Magness Wednesday night. The decision is the latest of several recently announced departures from the ERCOT board, which also included Magness. Magness's absence leaves a mix of vacancies and temporary members on the 16-member ERCOT board. She had come under sharp criticism by lawmakers after largely pointing blame for Texas’ power outages to ERCOT, the entity her agency oversees.

As temperatures plunged and snow and ice whipped the state, much of Texas' power grid collapsed, followed by its water systems. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)WASHINGTON – The House Oversight Committee is investigating the agency that operates the Texas power grid, seeking information and documents about the lack of preparation for the recent winter storm that caused millions of power outages and dozens of deaths across the state. AdSevere winter storms in Texas “have occurred repeatedly over decades, and ERCOT has been unprepared for them,” Khanna wrote in a letter to ERCOT CEO Bill Magness. Last month's storm followed similar winter storms in 1989 and 2011 that also caused massive outages, Khanna said. “It appears that lessons learned (again) in 2011 were not implemented either, leaving Texas vulnerable to extreme winter weather again in 2021,'' he wrote.

Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker. Credit: Texas Public Utility CommissionThe chairwoman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the agency that regulates the state’s electric, telecommunication, and water and sewer utilities, resigned Monday, according to a resignation letter provided to the Texas Tribune. The Governor Greg Abbott-appointed commissioners came under public criticism in the aftermath of Texas’ power crisis that left millions of people in the dark for days and claimed the lives of dozens. Dan Patrick called for PUC chairwoman DeAnn Walker and Electric Reliability Council of Texas CEO Bill Magness to resign. Lawmakers probed how much information she had on whether the state’s power system could withstand winter storms, and questioned why she didn’t raise concerns about the possibility of outages sooner.

“Both the PUC Chair and the ERCOT CEO said they were prepared the day before the storm hit in full force, but obviously they were not,” Patrick said in a statement. His statements come after the officials testified for hours late last week in committee hearings as state lawmakers grilled them over the power grid failures. The week of Feb. 14, freezing temperatures and snow caused mass power outages and water issues and left dozens of people dead. Patrick said PUC and ERCOT officials were not ready for a winter storm of this magnitude and were given ideas for ways to prepare, but failed to do so. “I do not make this call for the resignation of the PUC Chair and the ERCOT CEO lightly,” Patrick said.

AUSTIN – Committees from both the Texas Senate and Texas House on Thursday questioned energy executives and the head of the state’s power grid operator during hearings exploring last week’s deadly winter storm and power outages. Lawmakers, including state Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, questioned why alerts sent out to the public ahead of a hurricane were not used prior to the storm. “I think we should have made some sort of public announcement, sort of like we do with hurricanes,” said Menendez. Curtis Morgan, CEO of Vistra Corp., an Irving-based energy company, told House members during a joint hearing that energy plants in Texas are built to withstand hot weather and hurricanes, but not frigid temperatures. A report released Thursday by Texans for Public Justice, an Austin non-profit that tracks money in Texas politics, shows that political donors tied to ERCOT’s board gave Texas House members more than $700,000 the past two years.

AdThe San Antonio - Bexar County Office of Emergency Management announced all major San Antonio highways and other roads closed. Wintry precipitation from Sunday night resulted in snow for San Antonio and the surrounding area. AdThe San Antonio area saw the final round of wintry weather that dropped up to 5 inches of snow. According to records dating back to 1947, the longest time San Antonio spent below freezing was 70 years ago. Money donated to Let’s Help SA will be distributed to the San Antonio Food Bank, SAMMinistries and Haven for Hope.

Millions went without power in Texas for days last week, and on Wednesday the grid operator’s board acknowledged Texans’ suffering. The most significant source of power loss during the crisis came from natural gas power plants that couldn’t generate power — whether from fuel supply shortages or freezing components at the plants. AdHowever, board members also commended ERCOT grid operators for making the difficult decision to order the outages, which averted an uncontrolled system collapse. Six ERCOT board members’ resignations became effective at the end of the meeting. ERCOT confirmed on Wednesday that Randal Miller, who represented independent retail power providers, also resigned his position on the board.

Magness gave the presentation Wednesday during the first ERCOT board of directors meeting since the winter storm passed through the Lone Star State. AdMagness’ presentations also included comparisons to Texas’ last severe winter storm in 2011. (KSAT)The Dallas-Fort Worth area had been at or below freezing temperatures for 140 consecutive hours, compared to 101 hours in 2011′s winter storm. In Austin, the city was at freezing temperatures for 162 consecutive hours, compared to 69 hours in 2011. ERCOT officials will testify about the winter storm outages in front of the Texas Legislature on Thursday.

One claim making the rounds on social media alleged the Biden administration played a role in throttling power production in the name of protecting the environment. After digging into the evidence behind these claims, KSAT’s Trust Index team has determined those social media posts are not true. “It looks like the Biden administration pretty much gave ERCOT what it asked for,” said Dr. Daniel Cohan, Associate Professor of civil and environmental engineering for Rice University. While it’s not ideal to have power generators exceed environmental limits, Cohan said it was necessary during this emergency. “And so the Biden administration gave them everything they asked for to be able to keep those power plants running.”AdCohan thinks the social media claims suggesting the Biden administration somehow throttled power production are off-base.

AdFour of the departing board members acknowledged “concerns about out-of-state board leadership" in a letter to grid members and the state's Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT. The board members did not reflect on their own performance in the letter. The other board members are vice chairman Peter Cramton, Terry Bulger and Raymond Hepper. The selection of “unaffiliated” ERCOT board members — like most of those who are resigning — must be approved by the PUC. Hepper also declined comment beyond the resignation letter, and other board members did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

SAN ANTONIO – Top officials of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the agency that regulates the state’s electric grid, said Friday that no energy source was safe from the massive winter storm this week. AdThat choice kept the state’s electric grid from a possible catastrophic blackout, ERCOT officials previously said. (KSAT)The deadly storm has reignited arguments about the state’s energy plan, including whether it over invested in renewable energy sources. Still, wind energy accounts for less than a quarter of the state’s electricity, a figure that is lower in winter months, ERCOT officials said. AdThat supply, according to ERCOT officials, would have been just as vulnerable to the elements.

With the weather warming up and freezing temperatures behind us, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas ended emergency conditions on Friday morning. Around 10:38 a.m., they announced the emergency conditions were formally rescinded, marking a return to normalcy. Since overnight Monday, millions of Texans were out of power due to controlled outages to keep the state’s power grid stable. AdDespite the good news from ERCOT on ending emergency conditions, there are still thousands of Texans without power across the state. According to ERCOT, 34,000 megawatts of power remain on forced outage due to the weather.

About 260,000 homes and businesses in the Tennessee county that includes Memphis were told to boil water because of water main ruptures and pumping station problems. And water pressure problems prompted Memphis International Airport to cancel all incoming and outgoing Friday flights. Paul Lee Davis got to the front of the line at a water station set up by city officials only to have the water run out. Water service was restored Friday to two Houston Methodist community hospitals, but officials still were bringing in drinking water and some elective surgeries were canceled, spokeswoman Gale Smith said. AdMore than 192,000 Louisiana residents -- some still struggling to recover from last August's Hurricane Laura -- had no water service Friday, according to the state health department.

ERCOT President & CEO Bill Magness briefly addressed the winter weather at the start of his report before quickly moving on. We’ll probably see our winter peak later this week or in the very early part of next week. “I feel like I have a virtual gavel.”Last week’s board meeting included the elections of a new ERCOT chair and vice-chair. ERCOT is scheduled to be the focus of an emergency hearing before the Texas Legislature next week. AdMagness said the bios were in the process of being put back online after he and other ERCOT officials determined it was public information.

Credit: Eddie Gaspar/The Texas TribuneThe operator of Texas' power grid said Thursday that it has made significant progress in returning energy to the state's system and is no longer having to order electricity providers to cut power to homes and businesses. But many people across the state remain without power due to more local problems in the electrical system. And in a growing crisis, millions of people across the state have had their water service disrupted because of the winter storm. It's unclear how many people currently are lacking power in the state, though the number has declined significantly in the past 24 hours. Oncor Electric Delivery, Texas’ largest utility, provides power for almost 4 million customers across Texas.

Ad“Every one of our sources of power supply underperformed," Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, tweeted. The staggering imbalance between Texas' energy supply and demand also caused prices to skyrocket from roughly $20 per megawatt hour to $9,000 per megawatt hour in the state's freewheeling wholesale power market. Grid operators say rolling blackouts are a last resort when power demand overwhelms supply and threatens to create a wider collapse of the whole power system. In Texas this week, grid operators and utilities knew about the dire weather forecast for at least a week. Texas, which has a grid largely disconnected from others to avoid federal regulation, may have to rethink the go-it-alone strategy.

ERCOT manages the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texans. SAN ANTONIO – Top officials from ERCOT, the Texas council that regulates the electric grid, defended the decision to shed power and initiate rolling outages early Monday, claiming it prevented a possible indefinite blackout across the state. That decision left millions of Texans without power and persisted for a third day Wednesday, as outages remained prolonged in San Antonio and other parts of the state. 😷 (@Ron_Nirenberg) February 16, 2021Local and state officials have heaped much of the blame for the prolonged power outages on ERCOT. Magness conceded there was no clear timeline on when the power grid would return to normal and that the prolonged outages had to be maintained much longer than anyone would have wanted.

A snow covered Matilda Street in Dallas after a winter storm hit the area on Monday. Many Texans are currently facing hours-long outages during freezing weather— or have been without power for days. Magness said ERCOT has been unable to project specifics on when long-lasting power outages would end "because of the variables we've identified around the resources, the weather." ERCOT, a nonprofit that manages the power grid used by almost all of the state, has come under scrutiny this week after a massive winter storm caused millions of residents to lose power for long spans during below freezing temperatures. The loss has come from multiple sources of power — including natural gas, coal, wind and nuclear.

Updated at 7:09 p.m.:ERCOT issued the following update regarding the electrical crisis:“We are working around the clock to restore power to Texans,” said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness. AdAs of 6 p.m., approximately 43,000 MW of generation has been forced off the system during this extreme winter weather event. We continue to work as quickly and safely as possible to restore power. — ERCOT (@ERCOT_ISO) February 17, 2021ERCOT officials said they were able to restore power to 600,000 homes Tuesday, but that millions are still without power. ERCOT officials could not provide a solid timeline on when they expected to resolve the outages.

(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)The Latest on winter weather across the U.S. (all times local):OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma Gov. Stitt’s disaster declaration request for all 77 Oklahoma counties comes a day after the governor spoke with Biden by phone. ___NEW ORLEANS — Rolling power blackouts necessitated by severe winter weather hit water systems in at least two Louisiana cities. He implored residents to stop running water, noting that temperatures had risen above the freezing mark___RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Gov. — The Louisiana Department of Health on Wednesday confirmed three deaths related to winter weather this week.

Power lines along a row of homes in South Austin. Many residents experienced power outages due to the winter storm that rolled through Texas. Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas TribuneSign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. Officials with the state's energy grid operator said Tuesday it is still struggling with balancing supply and demand to the Texas power grid — and could not project when long-lasting outages would end as a winter storm caused millions of residents to lose power. Hearings in both the House and Senate are already scheduled on the issue in the coming weeks, according to leaders in the two chambers.

A major winter storm affected the entire state of Texas. Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas TribuneSign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. Texas’ electrical grid operator is implementing rolling blackouts across most of the state Monday after a massive winter storm brought unprecedented demand for electricity and forced multiple power-generating units offline. On Sunday, the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for all 254 counties. The grid operator also said it would provide an update at 10:30 a.m. Central time Monday.

State officials said surging demand, driven by people trying to keep their homes warm, and cold weather knocking some power stations offline had pushed Texas' system beyond the limits. “This event was well beyond the design parameters for a typical, or even an extreme, Texas winter that you would normally plan for. At DFW, the temperature was 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 degrees Celsius) — 3 degrees (-16 degrees) colder than Moscow. In Houston, officials said Bush Intercontinental Airport runways would remain closed until at least 1 p.m. Tuesday, a day longer than previously expected. The southern Plains had been gearing up for the winter weather for the better part of the weekend.

Update ( Tuesday 1 p.m. ):The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) directed local utilities to restore power to thousands of Texans who have been stuck in the dark and in freezing temperatures for hours. Despite the increase in availability, millions of Texans still do not have power and went through the night in frigid cold. “The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours,” Abbott said. Update (5 p.m.): The Electric Reliability Council of Texas says that crews are beginning to restore some of the power lost due to the snowstorm. “ERCOT and Texas electric companies have been able to restore service to hundreds of thousands of households today, but we know there are many people who are still waiting,” said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness.