Investigating the Texas power grid
The forecast was for record breaking cold for Texas, including Houston. Power generating companies were supposed to be ready. They weren’t. KPRC Investigates reporter Robert Arnold takes a deep dive into what went wrong and is a guest on this week’s Houston Newsmakers with Khambrel Marshall. Arnold says Texans were let down on many fronts.
“They pay their bill they should be able to turn on their lights,” he said. “They should not have to worry about catastrophic power failures DURING WINTER STORMS. That is the state’s job to make sure that our grid is in working order and in this case it wasn’t.”
ERCOT was destined to fail
Ed Hirs has spent years analyzing the ERCOT power grid system and says it doesn’t need fixes here and there. When hearing that Governor Abbott plans to ask the Texas Legislature to come up with solid mandates for power producing companies to follow and to ask for funding to make it easier to do, he said it sounded like a socialist type policy designed to make up for bad history.
“That runs counter to what the Republicans and the legislature and the governor stand for,” he said. “We’ve been listening to this for decades and they (Republicans) follow that mantra. They screwed up. They need to rebuild the market.”
What does impeachment acquittal mean for Trump and the GOP?
After his second impeachment acquittal, former president Trump may have a renewed ability to play a pivotal role in the future of the Republican Party but to what end?
“He has the ability to make life very difficult for the Republican party, particularly in seats that are competitive seats where they want some moderate or centrist moderate candidates,” Jones said.
“He could run more Trumpian candidates that could win the primary but then could hurt the Republican party by losing the general election.”
Also weighing in this week on the uproar over Senator Ted Cruz heading to Cancun while Texas was in a deadly deep freeze. “I think that he’s going to be the butt of national jokes for a while,” Professor Rottinghaus said. “But for Ted Cruz at least he’s doubled down on going all in with Donald Trump and to be honest that’s probably a pretty wise move in Texas.”
More Information:
Robert Arnold, KPRC Investigates
· Website: https://www.click2houston.com/team/L6SS63LGY5DFVP43G6NYANAKLY/
· Twitter: @KPRC2RobertArnold
Ed Hirs, Energy Fellow, University of Houston
· Website: https://uh.edu/uh-energy/about-uh-energy/energy-fellows/blog-posts/ed-hirs/
· Website: https://edhirs.com/
· Twitter: @EdHirs
Mark Jones, Ph.D., Political Science Fellow, Baker Institute at Rice University
· Website: https://www.bakerinstitute.org/experts/mark-p-jones/
· Twitter: @MarkPJonesTX
· Twitter: @BakerInstitute
Brandon Rottinghaus, Ph.D., Professor, University of Houston Political Science
· Website: https://uh.edu/class/political-science/faculty-and-staff/professors/rottinghaus/
· Twitter: @UHouston
· Twitter: @bjrottinghaus