Why blackouts in texas

Professor Spence is co-author of the leading energy law casebook, Energy, Economics and the Environment Foundation Press , and has published numerous scholarly articles on subjects relating to energy policy, regulation and the regulatory process. His scholarly writings address the environmental regulation of the oil and gas industry and the electric utility industry, as well as economic regulation regulation of price and competition in the public utility industry.

He has Ph. D in political science from Duke University and a J. His research focuses on the development of quantitative methods for solving complex problems in finance and economics.

His interests include risk management, derivatives markets, asset allocation and asset management, central clearing, the structure and evolution of financial markets, energy finance, and real estate finance. Jay Zarnikau teaches graduate-level courses in applied statistics, research methods and energy economics at UT. As the former president of Frontier Associates LLC which merged into Frontier Energy Zarnikau provided consulting assistance to utilities, retail electric providers and energy consumers in the design and evaluation of energy efficiency programs, retail market strategies, electricity pricing, demand forecasting and energy policy.

Zarnikau formerly served as a program manager at the University of Texas at Austin Center for Energy Studies, and was the director of electric utility regulation at the Public Utility Commission of Texas. He has written or co-written over 75 articles in academic and trade journals. His research interests center on energy pricing, electricity resource planning, renewable energy, energy market design and the application of modeling techniques to problems in resource economics.

He has provided expert witness testimony in over 40 regulatory proceedings. Zarnikau has a Ph. She received the B. Her current interests include physics-aware and risk-aware machine learning for power systems, and energy management accounting for the cyber-physical coupling.

Skip to main content. The Timeline and Events of the February Texas Electric Grid Blackouts Group Synopsis Committee Members In February , an extreme winter storm event caused a massive electricity generation failure in the state of Texas, which resulted in a loss of power for more than 4.

Committee Co-Chairs Dr. Jay Zarnikau Dr. Carey King Energy Institute Dr. Erhan Kutanoglu Dr. Leibowicz Dr. Ning Lin Dr. Dev Niyogi Dr. Varun Rai Dr. Webber said he was glad to see FERC call out the natural gas system as a main culprit for the February blackouts. In this investigation, the Chronicle documented how 20 million Texans lost power in a deadly freeze after state lawmakers brushed aside a decade of warnings about the increasingly vulnerable electric grid.

Fixing Texas' unreliable power grid won't be cheap or easy. Can we trust politicians to get it done? While paying respects at a memorial outside of NRG Park, some attendees raised more questions about the chaotic scene not even 48 hours prior. This risk will be reduced as the adoption of energy storage increases. The three extreme scenarios considered by ERCOT are summarized in the following table: Scenario Description Impact on the Texas Grid Scenario 1 Having a drought similar to and low winds, while many gas-fired power plants go offline.

Shortage of 3, MW, and , homes are affected by blackouts. Scenario 2 Same as scenario 1, combined with low solar power generation due to unfavorable weather. Shortage of 7, MW, and 1. Scenario 3 Texas is affected by a severe heat wave, and all major electricity sources are affected by outages. Shortage of 14, MW, and 2. Leave a Reply Want to join the discussion? Feel free to contribute! Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

Fannin County Electric Cooperative. Farmers Electric Cooperative. Floresville Electric Light and Power System.

Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative. Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative. Heart of Texas Electric Cooperative. Houston County Electric Cooperative. Kerrville Public Utility. Lamb County Electric Cooperative. Lea County Electric Coop. Lyntegar Electric Cooperative. Magic Valley Electric Cooperative. Medina Electric Cooperative. Mid-South Synergy. Navasota Valley Electric Coop. New Braunfels Utilities.