Texas lessons – the interconnected utility ecosystem
The February extreme cold weather snap in Texas highlighted the interconnectedness of the electric and gas systems, says US energy policy expert Beth Garza.
Speaking in Enlit Europe’s grid series webinar on resilience and flexibility [1], Garza said what began as a major winter storm with traffic problems and snarled highways turned into an electricity problem for about a week and then into a water crisis for another week.
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“It has highlighted the tremendous interconnection between our electricity and natural gas systems, how dependent they are on each other and how ill prepared they were to interact with each other,” said Garza, Senior Fellow at the policy research R Street Institute and former Independent Market Monitor for the ERCOT wholesale markets.