MIDLAND, Texas — ERCOT held an urgent meeting to discuss and explain some of the issues that led to all of the problems that came out of the historic winter storm. That meeting highlighted and made official what most already knew: six members of ERCOT's board resigned.
"This was a devastating event for those of us who make our way in the power industry. Especially devastating because I think the people who work for all the various companies whatever segment they're in and the electric industry understand that power is essential to civilization, is essential to our ability to live our every day lives in the modern world," ERCOT CEO Bill Magness said.
So why was it so hard for the reliability council to keep the lights on? It's complicated. Here's one example into the "why" of it all. Today ERCOT leaders say it wasn't possible to pull energy in from other regions.
"I think the challenge we had here was that while there were some transfers into ERCOT from the southwest power pole, for example, they were experiencing similar weather. At one point they went into rotating outages in their region so there really wasn’t much to be called upon," Magness said.
State leaders believe that's just scratching the surface of last week's failures. They'll begin the process of taking a deeper look at what went wrong, and to make sure none of those mistakes happen again.
It's only the first step to getting a clear answer of "why" so many Texans were left in the dark.