Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker became the most prominent Texas official to fall in the wake of the February blackouts, announcing her resignation Monday after growing bipartisan calls from lawmakers for her to step down.
The Public Utility Commission (PUC), which regulates electric, telecommunication, and water services in the state, has come under intense scrutiny in the past week after state legislators grilled Walker during oversight hearings about the winter crisis. During her testimony before the House and Senate, Walker had tried to play down the extent of her regulatory powers over both ERCOT, which operates the state electric grid, and the electric power industry.
The commission has been under fire from lawmakers for failing to exert its regulatory authority after the 2011 winter power outages and ahead of the blackouts this February. In 2014, the commission softened an order that would have required energy companies to identify and address all possible failure points in their equipment due to extreme weather after a big power plant company argued against it. The commission has also been criticized for failing in its role as the regulator of ERCOT; disbanding its enforcement division and firing ERCOT’s independent reliability monitor without replacing it. Now, there’s growing concern about what the PUC will do to maintain competition among retail electricity providers as many companies are likely to go bankrupt and corporate giants NRG Energy and Vistra—which together already control more than 70 percent of the market—become more dominant.
