The state’s grid operator warned about a possible electricity emergency between Friday and Saturday.
More than 800,000 Texas customers of electric utility service CenterPoint Energy are currently without electricity due to severe storms in the Houston region, with the company asking people to prepare for “extended weather-related power outages.”
“A fast-moving but severe weather system has caused widespread power outages across the service area,” CenterPoint Energy
said in a May 17 X post.
According to
data from Poweroutage.us, out of the 877,804 households facing outages in Texas as of 02:50 a.m. ET on Friday, more than 803,000 were CenterPoint customers. Over 765,000 of the affected households are in Harris County.
CenterPoint is “experiencing an
extremely high call volume after today’s severe weather. Please keep the phone lines open for those reporting a hazardous condition, such as a downed or sparking wire.”
The company
warned customers about the potential dangers of downed lines. “We’ve received reports of wires down as storms moved across our service area. Please assume all lines are energized and dangerous and stay at least 35 feet away. Never spray a sparking or burning wire with water and never attempt to remove tree limbs or any object from power lines.”
It
asked users to be “prepared for extended weather-related power outages and possible delays in some outage notifications.”
CenterPoint’s warning about extended power outages comes as the National Weather Service (NWS)
forecasts a “hazardous weather” outlook in some parts of Texas for Friday. Between 07:00 a.m. Friday and 07:00 a.m. Saturday, the agency predicts “excessive rainfall” and “severe weather” in the state’s eastern coastal regions.
Areas near and to the east of “Lufkin to Cypress to Wharton to Palacios line” face a marginal risk of heavy rainfall that could result in flash flooding. For much of southeastern Texas, there is a marginal risk of isolated to scattered strong to severe thunderstorms, it said.
“Please do not drive in Downtown Houston tonight, or for that matter, anywhere else in the region that sustained storm damage. Widespread debris, glass, and electrical lines are in the streets. Follow local news media and emergency management officials recommendations,” the NWS
said in an X post.
Meanwhile, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s grid operator, issued an
alert on Thursday that a possible electricity emergency could arise between Friday and Saturday.
Social media was alight with reports of outages in Houston. “Hey gang, how’s everyone doing? We’re sitting with no power on the east side. I have NEVER seen anything like that in my 10 years here in Houston,” meteorologist Justin Stapleton
said on social media.
Pointing to hundreds of thousands of households without power in Harris County, Bill Karins, from the NBC News climate & weather unit,
said this was one of the “worst severe thunderstorms to ever hit downtown Houston.”
Meteorologist Craig Ceecee
predicted it would “realistically” take several days at least to restore all the lost power in the Houston region.
Doug Lewin, host of the Energy Capital podcast,
suggested that a major portion of policymakers’ and utilities’ resiliency plans should focus on “helping homeowners and renters get energy storage.”
Renewable Energy in Texas
Texas has previously faced challenges with providing electricity to homes. In 2021, five ERCOT board members
resigned from their posts after the state’s power system failed during a winter storm and left over four million citizens without power. This has put a spotlight on the state’s renewable energy use.
According to data from the Texas Comptroller, a significant portion of Texas’ electricity generation is from renewable sources. In 2023,
wind power made up 28.6 percent of ERCOT’s generating capacity, second only to natural gas at 41.8 percent. Solar
energy made up six percent of ERCOT’s electricity generation in 2022.
In a 2021 interview with The Epoch Times, Richard Epstein, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a law professor at New York University Law School, warned that greater reliance on wind and solar as a primary power source creates a higher possibility of energy mishaps.
If Texas relies primarily on wind and solar energy, “it will have a huge destabilization because you get the greatest abundance in these [renewable] fuels often at a time when you need them the least.”
The Biden administration is pushing towards clean, renewable sources of energy as part of its climate agenda, which Mr. Epstein says is a “suicidal” approach.
“You cannot make your base an unstable source of energy,” he said. “It’s like you’re trying to lend money to somebody on a lottery ticket, which wins half the time, loses half the time, and half the time, you’re broke.”
“The more we make this stuff primary, the more dislocations we’re going to have ... It’s about keeping stable supplies under adverse conditions, and wind and solar cannot do that.”
Backers of renewable energy tout its benefits. The American Clean Power Association (ACP), which represents the clean energy industry, claims Texas’ wind energy provides $3.3 billion in societal benefits annually.
“These benefits include reducing the cost of producing electricity, protecting consumers from increases in the price of other fuels, and reducing public health costs by eliminating harmful pollution,” it claimed.
“By protecting against electricity and fuel price increases and reducing the need to operate the most expensive power plants, wind energy provides Texas consumers with $1.2 billion per year in gross benefits.”
The Texas Association of Business
states that wind and solar power provide a “significant economic boon for the state.”
Speaking to The Epoch Times in November, William Keffer, director of the Energy Law Programs at Texas Tech University,
warned about depending too much on renewables.
Texas has “allowed our sources for electricity in the state to become lopsided so that we have too much dependence on the renewables sector—wind and solar—and not as much capacity as we should have when it comes to the dispatchable sources like natural gas, coal, and nuclear.”
