Improved Disaster Response

On June 8^th, Governor Abbott signed two major ERCOT reform bills that are just part of the Legislature’s overall response to Winter Storm Uri. SB 2 will reform the governance of ERCOT by requiring members to be residents of Texas – a change I called for immediately upon learning that many board members resided outside of Texas. 

SB 3 institutes multiple reforms to ensure that Texas is prepared for future natural disasters including: rules preventing lengthy rolling blackouts, issuing fines to utilities that are not prepared for severe weather events, creating a statewide power outage alert system, and more.

While things can and will change – be assured that we are doing everything we can to ensure the reliable performance of the Texas grid. We learned a lot from the February storms. And I am proud of the work that the Texas Legislature has done and continues to do to respond to ensure that those failures we all experienced never happen again.