Texas: ERCOT opted for remote ‘virtual inspections’ of electrical infrastructure

Texas: Paranoid COVID Policy Led ERCOT to Abandon On-Site Inspections of Power Plants

21st Century Wire, 

20 February, 2021

Rather than conducting necessary in-person inspections of the state’s power facilities, fanatical government bureaucrats opted instead for remote ‘virtual inspections’ instead. The results were nothing short of disastrous.

This may be one of the most frightening COVID policy stories yet.

As Texas struggles to get power and heating back into some 4.5 million homes and businesses following this week’s record-breaking winter freeze, many residents and consumer advocacy groups are demanding answers as to how this unprecedented failure on the part of the state’s energy grid some to pass.

While certain culprits such as the state’s unreliable ‘green’ energy grid, rampant deregulation, and good old mother nature, have certainly played pivotal roles in the collapse, another more disturbing prospect has also emerged.

According to NBC 5 Investigates, derelict officials from ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, used COVID-19 as an excuse to avoid doing actual on-site inspections of the state’s power plants – putting millions of lives at risk. Rather than follow normal safety and technical procedures to ensure that Texas facilities were ready and able to cope with the winter season, bureaucrats did not conduct any in-person visits, and instead conducted remote ‘virtual tabletop’ exercises instead, and even then, only with 16% of the state’s power generating facilities.

NBC 5 reports…

RCOT said some power plants came back online overnight Tuesday but that others then shut down again. As the outages roll into a fourth day Thursday, it’s becoming very clear that many power plants, including the natural gas system that supplies those plants with fuel, were simply not insulated well enough to protect against the cold and that ERCOT was way off in its assumptions about the state’s ability to weather a major winter storm.

ERCOT released a study in early September assuring the public, “ERCOT anticipates there will be sufficient installed generating capacity to serve system-wide forecasted peak demand this winter.”

But instead of sufficient capacity dozens of power plants crumbled when the cold hit, plunging the state into massive power outages and putting lives in danger.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said it’s time for the CEO to step down, saying Tuesday ERCOT had become “anything but reliable.”

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Continue this story at NBC 5