AUSTIN, Texas — The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has released the preliminary report it filed with the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) on the causes of generator outages and derates during February's winter storms. The report covers the period of Sunday, Feb. 14 through Friday, Feb. 19.
ERCOT said the report provides information on the causes of outages and derates throughout the storms based on its review of information submitted by Qualified Scheduling Entities (QSEs) in response to its first requests for information (RFIs). ERCOT has submitted additional RFIs to QSEs to gather outage cause information for Feb. 10 through Feb. 13.
ERCOT noted the information in the report is preliminary and subject to change and that, for the purposes of the report, an "outage" is the complete unavailability of a generator's capacity and a "derate" is the partial unavailability of that capacity.
ERCOT said the amount of outaged capacity shown in the graph below increased sharply as the storm arrived on Sunday and stayed fairly constant from late Monday morning through midday Wednesday.
However, as shown in the graph below, the net level of outages masks the volatility in generation availability throughout the week, with generators continuing to go out of and come into service throughout the duration of the storms. ERCOT said that volatility made it difficult to accurately forecast an end to emergency conditions.
ERCOT said the above graph shows the generator outages and derates that started or ended in each hour on Feb. 14 through Feb. 19, by cause category. The quantity of outages starting during a given hour is shown as positive values, while the quantity of outages ending during a given hour is shown as negative values.
Read the rest of ERCOT's report here or below:
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