Texas grid officials received repeated warnings last summer that their efforts to shore up the state’s increasingly strained electric grid risked driving up power prices, records show.
Concerns first arose just days after the state launched a new policy meant to keep more backup electricity supply in reserve in case of emergencies, known as the Ercot Contingency Reserve Service, or ECRS. Complaints about ECRS soon reached Governor Greg Abbott’s office. “Yo – you getting hit on ECRS stuff?” an employee for the grid manager texted a member of Abbott’s staff, according to documents obtained via open records requests. “Oh for sure,” the Abbott staffer responded.
Yet the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or Ercot as the grid manager is known, pressed on. In September, just three months after ECRS was introduced, a Bloomberg investigation found that on one key day it had helped spike power prices to the highest levels since Wint