Some went without power for days in Houston’s winter storm; others never lost

Across town, Deep Datta lost power in his Heights apartment just once, for all of three hours. When the power and heat went out on Feb. 17, the 27-year-old environmental engineer said he put on a jacket when it got a little chilly inside.

“I know for some people, it was more of a life-threatening situation,” Datta said. “For me, it wasn’t as bad. It was kind of an inconvenience. I was fairly comfortable the whole week.”

The starkly different experiences of Swint and Datta highlight a critical question still lingering from the recent power crisis: Why didn’t rotating outages rotate? The rolling blackouts ordered by the Electric Reliability Council to stabilize the power grid were supposed to last no more than 45 minutes and spread equally among customers, but some Texans were without electricity for three days, ERCOT said, while others never lost power.

The inability or failure to rotate power outages equitably meant the impact of the ice, snow and frigid temperatures was not shared equally — to devastating effect.

Dozens of Texans died during hours-long blackouts, including an 11-year-old boy in Conroe and a 95-year-old man in Acres Homes who were found dead in their freezing homes. In Sugar Land, three children and their grandmother trying to keep warm by their fireplace perished in a house fire.

In Galveston, a 75-year-old veteran, down to his last oxygen bottle after his electric-powered oxygen tank inside his house ran out, went to his truck to get it and died in the cold. Hundreds of Texans were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after resorting to running cars, portable generators, gas stoves and barbecue grills inside their homes and garages.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Days ahead of blackouts, ‘the warning signs were there’

Homes, schools and businesses across the state suffered billions of dollars of property damage from frozen and broken water pipes. Some insurance estimates forecast the winter storm could be the costliest natural disaster in Texas history, possibly surpassing the $125 billion in damage from Hurricane Harvey.

Much of the human suffering and misery during the winter storm was caused by the inability or failure to rotate outages, ERCOT CEO Bill Magness suggested. The amount of power that utilities had to cut — known as shedding load — to offset the huge loss of electricity supplies was so great that the outages could not be rotated without risking the stability of the grid.

“When we had a lot of load shed, some customers were stuck in that load shed for the entire time,” Magness told ERCOT board members last week. “That’s where so much of the harm and damage came from.”

Carrying the load

CenterPoint Energy, a regulated utility, owns transmission lines and distributes power to homes, public buildings and businesses in the Houston area. The utility’s distribution charges account for half or more of electric bills; the balance is the cost of electricity sold by retailers such as Reliant, Griddy or Discount Power.

CenterPoint said it began preparing for the extreme weather on Thursday, Feb. 11, about three days before the storm hit. ERCOT forecast electricity demand would hit a record about 75,000 megawatts, nearly 14 percent higher than the previous winter peak of 65,915 megawatts set in January 2018.

Supply and demand must stay balanced on the grid, or else it can collapse, knocking out power everywhere. ERCOT on Saturday, Feb. 13, said it expected up to a 7,500-megawatt shortfall in electricity supplies during the winter storm, warning utilities that rotating power outages could be necessary.

CenterPoint is responsible for shedding about 25 percent of the excess load on the grid when electricity demand exceeds power generation. Only Oncor Electric Delivery in Dallas is…