What Happened In Texas Will Happen Again Without Action

By Andy Bennett

With power across Texas finally restored for the most part, our attention can begin to turn from responding to immediate, urgent human needs to the vastly important task of ensuring something like February’s outages, which saw 3 million people in the country’s second largest state go without power for as long as a week, never happens again. What happened? 

The answer is obviously complicated, but it’s important to start by trying to understand why these outages happened in this specific state, which is in many ways a microcosm for our energy future. Over the last two decades, a light touch regulatory approach has spurred innovation and helped nurture some fantastic companies. It has also helped advance the development of microgrids, and in many cases driven some of the highest renewable energy penetration in the country. 

However, as millions of Americans learned last week, the state’s approach has also come with some serious drawbacks, including a lack of redundance and ill-preparedness for once-in-a-lifetime adverse weather events, which studies show are only going to get more common. For that reason, the situation in Texas is more representative of nation’s energy future than we might think, and the playbook for responding to last week’s crisis is one that will likely need to be replicated across the country.  

Building more resilient grids 

Last week’s outages woke people up to the fact that our electricity grids are far less resilient than they need to be. 

Unlike in Europe or in most Northern, weatherized cities, much of the electricity infrastructure in the south is above ground and not even insulated. Nationwide, the average age of a transformer is 35 years, already likely at or even well beyond their expected lifespan. Rectifying deferred maintenance will require investment in advanced AI solutions that can help companies assess connectivity to determine the real source of outages, optimize repair and maintenance response, identify potentially dangerous vegetation growth and predict and determine which assets most need to be repaired. 

Accommodating energy decentralization  

Energy distribution is inevitably going to continue to become decentralized, even without an aggressive from-the-top action at the state level. As solar panels and other renewables become more powerful and more accessible, people are going to start to rely less on the grid. 

Renewable penetration is obviously good: It reduces carbon footprint and allows consumers to reduce their energy costs. However, it can also make assessing connectivity a challenge when consumers are getting energy from a variety of different sources. As energy production becomes increasingly decentralized, organizations responsible for providing it will need to invest more in predictive maintenance that allows them to more accurately identify shortcomings in the grid or to forecast the impacts of problems like storms. 

Prioritizing focus 

Unfortunately, the outages present a stark warning sign that the common maintenance procedures that once kept utilities going are no longer enough. Today, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, satellite imaging, advanced weather modeling and new tools like digital twins are needed that not only give operators a holistic picture of their assets and their vulnerabilities, but also to help them prepare for and respond to outages and restore grids more quickly. 

The problems we saw in Texas may have been unprecedented, but they are unlikely to remain that way for long. Increasingly intense weather events, combined with aging or ill-prepared infrastructure, make extreme outages increasingly probable. We as a country are going to need to start investing in a dramatically different way, or we’ll be dealing with events like what we saw last week for the next century.