Bill Magness sat in the Texas Senate chamber for several hours Thursday, defending himself and the Electric Reliability Corporation of Texas (ERCOT) that he runs. Senators grilled him about why the state’s once-obscure electric grid operator failed to prevent one of the worst power outages in U.S. history last week. ERCOT’s official mission as a nonprofit is “ensuring a reliable grid.” Instead, more than 4 million households lost electricity and heat in the middle of a severe winter storm. Texans across the state fought to survive in their freezing homes—many for days on end. At least three dozen people died.
“Texans suffered last week in ways they shouldn’t have to suffer,” Magness, who is president and CEO of ERCOT, told the state Senate Business and Commerce Committee. Magness said he felt “a great deal of responsibility and remorse” but insisted that ERCOT did “everything we could.” In hindsight, he said, he wouldn’t do anything differently.
Yet despite repeated warnings that the grid wasn’t resilient enough for big storms, ERCOT leaders have failed to incorporate extreme weather events into their supply and demand models—all while Magness and other executives have collected increasingly high six figure salaries, according to an Observer review of the nonprofit’s tax records. Overall, total pay for executives and directors increased by 50 percent in the years following the last near-blackout in the state in 2011, from about $5 million in 2012 to $7.5 million in 2019. Over the last decade, ERCOT, along with the Texas Public Utilities Commision (PUC) that oversees the nonprofit, declined to require winterization at power plants across the state because the Legislature didn’t make standards mandatory. In November, ERCOT’s own meteorologist had advised the nonprofit of the potential for a catastrophic winter storm in 2021.
