Comment by infecto
9 hours ago
You’re clearly frustrated here, but let’s keep it in the realm of facts rather than snark. I didn’t “leave out sources” to hide anything, I was speaking from the same public data you can find in FERC/NERC’s joint report on the 2021 event.
SPP did in fact suffer significant generation losses, around 30% at peak, during the February 2021 storm. Causes were mixed: natural gas supply constraints, plant equipment failures, and yes, winterization gaps. Prior to that event, FERC’s winterization guidance was minimal and largely voluntary, so both SPP and ERCOT were operating without strong federal mandates.
The difference in outcomes wasn’t that SPP magically avoided the same issues, it was that SPP is interconnected with MISO and other regional grids. That allowed them to rotate outages in short windows to maintain stability, while ERCOT’s ~50% generation loss, combined with its isolation from other grids, meant load shedding had to be longer and deeper to prevent collapse.
If we’re going to critique Texas’s market, we should separate the “market structure” question from the “operational standard” question. A competitive market like ERCOT’s can work, but without binding requirements on winterization and resource adequacy, you’re just betting the grid on ideal conditions. SPP’s experience shows that interconnection alone doesn’t prevent failures, but it does give operators more options when the weather turns.
Can you drop some of the hyperbole and passive aggressiveness? You don’t even understand my position yet being quite passive aggressiveness for no reason.
I'm done with the discussion until you can provide a link to all the other states under regulation that had outages as as result of frozen pumps that had occurred multiple times over the previous 25+ years.
It's a straightforward ask that you're actively avoiding because it didn't happen and contradicts the story you're fabricating.
Not sure why you are so angry. I am trying to help you understand at least my perspective but you keep being quite aggressive for no reason.
You are framing this as if the only relevant comparison is “multiple frozen pump events over 25+ years,” but that is narrowing the scope to avoid the larger point. The February 2021 FERC/NERC report clearly documents that frozen instrumentation, valves, and pumps occurred in both regulated and unregulated markets during the same storm. SPP, MISO, and even parts of PJM experienced outages tied to equipment freezing, though the scale and duration differed because of interconnection and resource diversity.
What is different in Texas is not that freezing only happens there, but that ERCOT lost roughly 50 percent of its generation and could not import meaningful power to offset it. SPP lost about 30 percent, had similar natural gas and winterization issues, but managed to rotate outages for shorter periods because it could pull from neighboring grids.
If you want the source, the joint FERC, NERC, and regional entity “February 2021 Cold Weather Grid Operations” report is publicly available and breaks this down by region. It does not fit the claim that regulated markets never see cold-weather-driven pump or plant failures. The record shows they do, but their structure gives them more tools to manage the consequences.
My whole original point was that a more market based generation and consumption model should not be overlook but let’s go through some simple facts because I think your narrative is off track.
1) Both Ercot and SPP had winter weather failures during that storm. Pretty similar on the natural gas side, frozen wells, lack of supply, huge spikes in the spot market.
2) SPP which is federally regulated had very similar winterization voluntary guidelines in place. Post event there are now new rules in place for winter.
3) SPP was able to fair better because they used a rolling blackout to different regions. Using the interconnect they could get energy from outside their grid and create short 60min blackouts. ERCOT had no luxury because of their lack of real interconnects.
https://www.spp.org/documents/65037/comprehensive%20review%2...
You’re more than welcome to read the review of the event from SPP. They call out well-head freeze offs, frozen cooling towers, intakes, fuel lines, etc. 50% of forced generation was a fuel supply issue.
You’re making it sound like Texas was an outlier here. It was not, SPP had the same exact issues of course with a slightly different fuel mix but they got by better with their interconnects. I don’t know why you are struggling to see that this winter event caught other grids by surprise. I am not defending Texas here but simply pointing out facts compared to your modified narrative.