BG Reads | News You Need to Know (February 22, 2021)
[BINGHAM GROUP]
NEW // BG Podcast EP. 130: Austin Crisis Update with Selena Xie, President, Austin EMS Association
Today’s episode (130) features Selena Xie, President of the Austin EMS Association. Since Sunday, the energy and weather crisis has impacted all parts of Austin, and EMS medics have been on the frontlines of it all. Selena shares perspectives from what she and her members have seen in that time.
NEW // BG Podcast EP. 129: Discussing Austin's Tech Community with Jason Fernandez, Managing Partner & COO, Quake Capital
Continuing a series of conversations the firm is having around the recent and continued media hype of tech flight to Austin (and Miami), Bingham Group CEO A.J. spoke with his friend Jason Fernandez, Managing Partner & COO, Quake Capital.
Jason is a Miami native who moved and established Austin roots in 2010. He maintains business and personal ties to Miami. The two dig into his impressions on moving to Austin, the tech community here, and also the appeal of his hometown.
You can listen to this episode and previous ones on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Please like, link, comment and subscribe!
CITY OF AUSTIN
The Austin City Council will next meet Thursday at 10AM for a Special Called Meeting
THE 87TH TEXAS LEGISLATURE
Thursday, 2.25.2021 @ 9AM
The House Committees on State Affairs and Energy Resources will hold a joint public hearing to consider the factors that led to statewide electrical blackouts during the recent unprecedented weather event; the response by industry, suppliers, and grid operators; and changes necessary to avoid future power interruptions.
LINK TO FILED HOUSE BILLS (2,197)
[AUSTIN METRO]
Council members criticize Cronk’s silence on call for food assistance (Austin Monitor)
Members of City Council have criticized City Manager Spencer Cronk for what they characterize as a poor response to their call last week to have the city set up a food assistance program for residents without food or water in the wake of the winter storm disaster.
In a letter penned Sunday (see below), Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison and Council members Vanessa Fuentes, Pio Renteria and Greg Casar restated their calls for the city to work with local agencies and nonprofits to help provide food to thousands of people who were already facing food scarcity. After a week of below-freezing temperatures that cut off energy and municipal water service for days at a time, Harper-Madison said the need for food aid is even more severe and that the city should fund and help coordinate the work of the appropriate groups at community centers and schools around the city.
Each of the four Council members or their staff began contacting Cronk on Friday asking for a plan to spin up a food distribution plan.
The letter drafted Sunday read, in part: “We have not yet received confirmation from you that we will have such a food distribution operation at the scale that is necessary, and the issue is urgent. Our constituents are asking us when and where food will be available for them.”
Harper-Madison, who spent most of the weekend at the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex handing out water and privately donated food, said city and state leaders need to step in to lead the recovery.
“Three-quarters of the stuff we have here at the Millennium came from community members and we have people coming over from the income-restricted apartment complex across the street bringing us stuff and not asking for stuff,” she said. “The community is doing exactly what communities are supposed to do and I don’t know that I can say the same about our city, our county and our state … I don’t know that we are responding to meet their needs.”
Over the weekend the city opened 11 distribution sites for bottled water, with a patchwork of free or discounted meals available to those in need around the city at restaurants or other businesses. Harper-Madison said the water pickup sites would be the natural locations for organizations able to provide food to use the city’s infrastructure and help as many people as possible.
“I don’t know that the city should take the lead. The city should maybe pay for it and prop up a team that could help. We should accept the fact that we are not nimble enough to respond quickly, so we can let somebody else take the lead,” she said. “The problem is everything takes too long to go through the processes of the city so we should let operations that can move more nimbly do the work. We’ve seen now how community-led efforts are so much more tangible and present than the city’s efforts, if for no other reason than that they can move faster.”
With a special called Council meeting scheduled for this week, Harper-Madison said local and state leaders need to develop comprehensive disaster relief programs that can ensure food, water and other basic needs are met quickly and reliably.
“How do we make certain we are prepared for disasters moving forward? How is the capital city for one of the largest states in our republic prepared for disaster in the future?”… (LINK TO STORY)
As some Texans see electric bills skyrocket, most Central Texans should be spared pricing spikes (Austin American-Statesman)
After weathering power and water outages and broken pipes, many Central Texans are now facing their next fear: What will their electricity bill look like after all of this?
As some Texans report sky-high bills, customers of the area's three largest electricity providers — Austin Energy, Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative and the Pedernales Electric Cooperative — should see no such spike, officials said.
The utilities do not engage in the kind of variable rate pricing that allowed some energy retailers to jack up rates as demand soared and the wholesale energy market went haywire.
In a statement to customers, Austin Energy explained that those affected by major bill spikes are seeing electric rates controlled by variable price billing and are therefore vulnerable to sudden price swings from the wholesale energy market.
"In contrast, Austin Energy’s base rates are fixed and any changes must be authorized by Austin City Council, our governing body, after a thorough rate review process," Austin Energy said… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin ISD cancels class Feb. 22-23, plans to go fully virtual through the rest of the week (Community Impact)
As temperatures begin to warm up, Austin ISD representatives have announced a plan to ramp up school activities by the end of February.
The district completely canceled classes Feb. 22 and 23, extending a closure that began Feb. 15."We want to provide our students, families and community the opportunity to recover and reset during this time," read a statement from the district.
The district then tentatively plans to hold classes completely virtually on Feb. 24 and 25, followed by an asynchronous day of instruction Feb. 26. Students who choose in-person classes would then be able to return to campus March 1… (LINK TO STORY)
Austin Energy says power has been restored to 100 percent of customers (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin Energy has fully restored power to 100% of its customers, according to online data Sunday night. The restoration comes a week after blackouts and weather-related outages started plaguing the system.
Throughout Sunday, the utility inched closer to full restoration, with only a handful of customers without electricity by the evening. In its 7:50 p.m. update, Austin Energy said it had no customers who remained in the dark.
At the height of the outages last week, Austin Energy reported that more than 40% of customers — more than 200,000 people — had no power.
Officials have said that crews worked around-the-clock to restore electrical service after countless people shivered in their homes with no heat during the winter storm.
Austin Energy has said many of the initial blackouts followed emergency orders to cut back on usage from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of power for more than 26 million customers on Texas' electric grid. By mid-week, Austin's system also was contending with additional weather-related outages from ice-laden limbs that damaged lines and other equipment… (LINK TO STORY)
As power returns for many Austin residents, semiconductor plants remain shut down (Austin Business Journal)
As Austin semiconductor manufacturing facilities remained closed on the afternoon of Feb. 19, racking up millions of dollars in losses, Ed Latson wondered whether the failure of the state’s energy grid this past week might cause companies to reevaluate in the future any plans to expand operations in the Texas capital.
“We can’t get companies like Tesla and Samsung to invest billions of dollars here if there is not a resilient grid,” said Latson, Austin Regional Manufacturers Association executive director. With no investment in a more resilient grid, he questioned whether Samsung would continue to consider the Texas capital as a location for a potential $17 billion expansion.
Multiple storms and single-digit temperatures this past week caused millions in Texas to lose electricity as power plants ill-equipped to withstand the cold shut down at the same time demand spiked. The Texas Tribune reported Feb. 18 that Electric Reliability Council of Texas officials said the state “power grid was ‘seconds and minutes’ away from a catastrophic failure that" might have plunged Texans into the dark for months.
Hundreds of thousands in Central Texas went days without electricity. Power has been restored in most parts of the region — about 4% of Austin Energy customers lacked power as of 3 p.m. Feb. 19 — but now thousands are without water.
Massively complex semiconductor fabrication facilities have been shut down in Austin for days, at a time when computer chips are in short supply globally. The fabs and other large power users went dark early this week at the request of Austin Energy, the Austin American-Statesman reported Feb. 16.
It's unclear if or how state leaders might act to prevent future disasters. Gov. Greg Abbott on Feb. 18 urged state legislators to mandate the winterization of generators and power plants, The Texas Tribune reported, which would entail upgrading infrastructure to better handle the cold.
Laura Huffman, president and CEO of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement that “the reliability and resiliency of our energy supply is a vital concern for businesses, especially those in high-tech manufacturing. We have heard from businesses of all sizes and in every sector — reliability is critical.”
“This has been a disaster for the semiconductor industry locally to lose power, first, and not be able to operate is huge,” Latson said. “Now a major water shortage is preventing” those companies from coming back online.
Samsung Austin Semiconductor LLC spokeswoman Michele Glaze said the company is “talking with Austin Energy and Austin Water,” and is “making efforts to resume as quickly as possible. Our primary focus is to ensure safety onsite for our workforce, as well as the community.”
The company employs about 3,000 in the Austin area and boasts a North Austin facility that spans 2.45 million square feet, 450,000 of which are dedicated to manufacturing.
Glaze declined comment on how the Texas grid failure might affect Samsung’s possible Austin expansion plans. Austin Energy and Austin Water officials did not immediately reply to requests for comment… (LINK TO STORY)
Save Austin Now sues city over ballot language (Austin Monitor)
Three Austin voters who signed a petition to put a public camping ban on the May 1 ballot have filed suit against the city to force a change in the ballot language. Linda Durnin, Eric Krohn and Michael Lovins allege in their suit that the language adopted by City Council is “unfair, prejudicial and distorts the actual petition language in an attempt to intentionally bias voters” against the camping ban.
The language Council approved emphasizes that the ordinance creates a criminal offense for public camping. It says, “Shall an ordinance be adopted that would create a criminal offense and a penalty for anyone sitting or lying down on a public sidewalk or sleeping outdoors in and near the downtown area and the area around the University of Texas campus; create a criminal offense and penalty for solicitation, defined as requesting money or another thing of value, at specific hours and locations or for solicitation in a public area that is deemed aggressive in manner; create a criminal offense and penalty for anyone camping in any public area not designated by the Parks and Recreation Department?”
In contrast, the caption from the Save Austin Now petition says, “Petitioned ordinance amending City Code section 9-4-11 relating to prohibiting camping in public areas, 9-4-13 relating to prohibiting solicitation, and 9-4-14 relating to prohibiting sitting or lying down on public sidewalks or sleeping outdoors in the Downtown Austin Community Court area; and creating offenses.”
Attorneys Donna Davidson and Bill Aleshire filed the suit on behalf of the three citizens, who got help from the Save Austin Now PAC, which collected signatures to put reinstatement of the camping ban on the ballot along with the prohibition against panhandling during the overnight hours.
Council voted to eliminate the previous ordinance prohibiting sitting or lying on public sidewalks and camping in certain public areas on June 19, 2019. The new ordinance also banned aggressive confrontations, which would include panhandling. Since then, public camping has proliferated and Mayor Steve Adler has said that the camping ban repeal “isn’t working.”
The major bone of contention between the city and Save Austin Now is Council’s failure to use the caption from the petition. Petitioners used the same language on their petition as the city used in its ordinance.
Aleshire and Davidson filed the lawsuit with the 3rd Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court. Aleshire explained it was necessary to start with the appellate court rather than a district court because of the short time frame. He said the 3rd Court of Appeals has requested that the city respond to the petition no later than Tuesday. Aleshire expects a ruling from the appellate court on Wednesday or Thursday.
He said Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir needs to have the final ballot language on Thursday in order to ensure that the ballots get printed in time for the May 1 election and so she can send ballots to military personnel overseas in time.
Council already has a special called meeting set for 10 a.m. Thursday to deal with items related to the recent weather, power and water emergency. The final item on that agenda is to approve an ordinance amending the previously adopted language for the Save Austin Now ballot item. Aleshire said the Austin City Charter requires Council to use the caption from the petition in setting the ballot language… (LINK TO STORY)
[TEXAS]
Texas officials block electricity providers from sending bills, disconnecting utilities for nonpayment (Texas Tribune)
Gov. Greg Abbott said he and other state leaders are working fast to find solutions for homeowners and renters facing steep electricity bills after a winter storm left many Texans without power for days.
After Abbott convened what his office described as an "emergency meeting" Saturday with lawmakers to discuss the issue, the Public Utility Commission on Sunday met to sign two orders, including one that would direct energy providers to temporarily stop disconnecting customers from power or water because they have not paid.
The commission also signed an order to stop companies from sending invoices or bill estimates to customers “until we work through issues of how we are going to financially manage the situation we are in,” commission Chair DeAnn Walker said.
“Disconnect for non pays cannot occur on a Sunday and that’s why we're acting today at this hour... trying to stop any from occurring tomorrow,” Walker said before the three-member commission approved the orders.
Both Abbott and the commission's meetings come as more Texans are reporting receiving exorbitant electric bills despite not having power during the storm. One Texan, according to The New York Times, received a $16,752 electric bill. Not every resident will see the spikes in their bills… (LINK TO STORY)
Gov. Greg Abbott wants power companies to “winterize.” Texas’ track record won’t make that easy. (Texas Tribune)
Winterize. That’s the directive Gov. Greg Abbott gave to power companies and lawmakers Thursday when he called for a law and funding to better prepare Texas’ essential power infrastructure for the kind of extreme winter weather that created multiple crises this week.
Energy experts said that in some cases, retrofitting plants to withstand cold could be extremely difficult and expensive in Texas. Many of those plants already skimped on such upgrades due to the infrequency of prolonged and widespread subfreezing temperatures in the state. That’s despite a 2011 winter storm that also caused power outages.
Building new “winterized” infrastructure, though, often adds little to the overall cost of a new project, experts say.
“Our planning is based on outdated weather patterns, and if you use outdated weather, you never expect to freeze,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Millions of people across Texas lost power during this week’s storm, and some died in the extreme cold without heat. On Friday, power was restored to most of the state, although about 140,000 customers are still facing localized outages, according to data compiled by PowerOutage.us.
Power outages began early Monday, when the amount of power available to the grid that covers most of Texas began to rapidly drop offline. Natural gas plants, utility scale wind turbines, coal and nuclear plants alike began to trip — many lacked the investments necessary to keep them online during low temperatures.
That forced the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, to order transmission utilities to start what was supposed to be “rolling” outages for customers. The goal was to prevent the entire grid from being knocked offline, which, officials said could have left Texans without power for weeks if not months. The rolling outages, though, lasted for days for millions of people… (LINK TO STORY)
Texas’ electric bargain: A deregulated market brought fast growth, big investments and cheap rates (Dallas Morning News)
After a cold front knocked out part of Texas’ electric grid a decade ago, companies were urged to winter-proof their power plants against severe weather. It was a suggestion, not an order, because generators are independent players in Texas’ deregulated market. They alone decide whether such investments are worthy. “We’re not an enforcement entity,” said Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state grid operator known as ERCOT.
Texas prefers to dangle a carrot: “There’s a very strong financial incentive” for generators, Magness told reporters on a conference call. Indeed, after Texas temperatures plunged on Valentine’s Day and power supply ran short, the wholesale price of electricity jumped to $9,000 per megawatt hour, up from the usual $20 to $30 range. Even those maximum prices weren’t enough to restore service, not during a deep freeze that knocked out 40% of generation, and the blame game has been in full swing ever since. Many are calling for investigations and reforms at ERCOT.
On Thursday, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said Texas should consider putting its grid under federal oversight. “We just have to be honest about the situation: The grid failed us,” Johnson said. Maybe this time, but there’s more to the story of Texas’ experiment with electric deregulation. Since opening to free-wheeling competition two decades ago, the state has attracted billions in private investment from power companies, diversified its generation sources and benefited from innovations in retailing and green energy. Its success has helped attract new businesses, especially manufacturers, and the abundance of low-priced electricity has been crucial to supporting a fast-growing population… (LINK TO STORY)
Thousands of Texas electric customers will be involuntarily switched to new providers, as companies fail (WFAA)
Thousands of Texans will be involuntarily switched to a new electric company, as a number of electricity providers cannot meet their financial obligations to serve their customers. In response, at an emergency meeting on Friday, the Texas Public Utilities Commission gave authority to TXU Energy to absorb customers of failing companies and to offer them competitive rates. It’s happening because, when the cost of electricity spiked during the cold snap, some retail electricity companies could not afford the high wholesale prices, forcing them into financial failure. A comprehensive list of failing electricity providers is not yet available.
“The travesty of this is the Public Utility Commission is supposed to make sure these firms are qualified to handle your money. And in many instances over the years we found several that don't and the customers are out of luck,” said Ed Hirs, who teaches energy policy at the University of Houston. In the case of failures like that, the state switches customers from those insolvent companies over to a new company, known as a Provider of Last Resort, or POLR. However, POLR rates are generally higher than standard electric rates. To avoid making customers pay for the failure of grid operators, the PUC has passed an emergency resolution to help ease that transition.
Specifically, it authorized TXU to absorb those stranded customers and bring them over at competitive electricity rates instead of emergency rates. What should customers do if they find they’ve been switched? “Find out how this contract came about. What their obligations are? If they can switch on the Power to Choose website. If not, see what they can do to break the contract,” Hirs said. PowerToChoose.org is the marketplace where customers can shop for electricity in Texas. There could be another billing problem on the horizon as well, this with Smart Meters. Normally, when a meter gives a reading of zero, billing software assumes there's been some kind of glitch and bills the customer for an historical average… (LINK TO STORY)