Texas Electrical Engineering Firm Joins Call for Change In ERCOT Texas Emergency System; RSO Recommended
April 19, 2021 — Austin-based Electric Power Engineers President Hala Ballouz is joining four other power industry experts in recommending a regional system operator model for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas-controlled power grid.
Based on the known events that occurred during the Valentine’s week Texas power crisis, the group of five energy-related managers and engineers said in a published statement that many of the deficiencies that led to and exacerbated the crisis “are a consequence of the way deregulation was enacted in Texas.”
This helped result in a system currently being used in Texas that led to a tragic failure “primarily as a consequence of following an approach to resource investment that relies entirely on the use of (short-term) markets,” the experts said in a scholarly paper published at ResearchGate.
Claims made by others that the market-based shortage-recovery system used by ERCOT actually “worked” is “disputable,” they added.