I’m on a call with ERCOT right now and have been told that the crisis we are in was caused by unprecedented demand for power and power generation units going offline due to the weather.

This is unacceptable. ERCOT manages the grid and overall load, and acted to prevent a catastrophic blackout. Here is what we need to find out: (1) why were the generation units not prepared for this weather event? This is a bad storm, but not historic.

(2) why was there no plan for responding to an emergency loss of some power generation? To have so many generating units go offline without any notice makes emergency planning impossible.

(3) why was the public not notified sooner about potential outages and the need to take emergency steps to mitigate their own usage? For example, Dallas’s skyline was lit up while some Dallas residents were freezing.

(4) why were ERCOT’s predictions for peak use in the winter so far off? We set a record for winter usage on Sunday but are still below summer peak usage.

I will keep working to get these answers to help Texans right now and to prevent the same missteps from leaving Texans without power in the increasingly common severe weather events we will face.