TEXAS

Nearly three dozen power facilities that failed in the 2011 winter storm failed again in 2021, according to an analysis by ABC13.

We've been taking a look at
power plants that went offline
Records show dozens of power plants repeat failures
Sat, March 6, 2021, 

Video Transcript

KEATON FOX: Hi there. I'm ABC 13's data analyst, Keaton Fox. We've been taking a look at power plants that went offline in 2021 versus the power plants that went offline in the 2011 winter storm. 10 years ago where that was the last time before 2021 that we had to see those rolling blackouts. Let me actually show you some of the data here.

All of the red counties are where power plants went offline in 2021. And as you can see, Harris County, very much a bright red county because we had quite a few power generation units go offline. 71 units at 11 different facilities across our area that went offline. We're

Getting this data, by the way, coming to us from ERCOT, who has released some of that data, but not all of the data. Only power plants that agreed to have their names released in this data set actually got released. And we know that there are at least three dozen of those power generation units that were offline in 2011 that went offline again in 2021.

Which would signify that if they would have done some of the things that had been suggested in a 2011 federal report-- There was a FERC Commission, a Federal Energy Commission that went over everything that happened in 2011 when we lost power, including winterization. They said if you go and you winterize these plants, it is a good possibility that we're not going to see this thing happen again. Well as we know, many of those plants, if not all of the plants, did little to nothing to actually winterize.

And then 2021 rolls around and we see everything happening once again. In fact, one of those CEOs, the CEO of Energy Energy, that many of you are very familiar with, admitted that they did nothing. That at least two of their plants were not prepared for the cold and that they had not taken the appropriate steps to make sure that things should have happened. I said it was Energy. It's actually Calpine Energy.

That's their CEO who said that they weren't prepared for that. We heard a lot of that testimony over the last year, but certainly, just again looking sort of at this data that we've gotten our hands on here at ABC 13, and then been able to analyze, we can see the impact. Again, across the state here, looking at all of the counties where there were power plants offline, the widespread nature of the problem. And winterization is at the heart of it, knowing that the cold actually knocked a lot of those pipes offline.

The water pipes froze that supplied those power plants as well. So a lot more on this, obviously. There's an interactive map below this video, if you're looking on ABC13.com.

If you're watching on one of our streaming devices, you can head over to ABC13.com and see all of the different plants that went offline. We're, of course, keeping our eye on all the data here at ABC 13. For now, I'm Keaton Fox, 13 Eyewitness News.