SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The weather is remarkably different one year later. Here is a break down of what the numbers tell about the 2021 February winter storm.
February winter storm in San Antonio by the numbers:
701: Vehicle accidents
40,000: Emergency 911 calls
267: Calls for oxygen refills
137: Calls for water
90: Calls for food
32: Calls from mothers in need of formula
734: Officers manning highway closures
34: Structure fires
111: Carbon monoxide incidents
$4M: Damage to city buildings
346,000: People without power in San Antonio.
“I knew something was going wrong,” said Joshua Rhodes of the Webber Energy Group.
4 mins 37 secs: How close Texas was to a total power grid collapse.
$418 million...so far: What CPS Energy paid in fuel costs.
“We are going to be paying this off for decades and it’s not something that is uncommon,” Rhodes said.
$378: What the average CPS Energy customer will pay for fuel charges spread out over 25 years.
“I would have hoped we had learned that lesson in 2011,” Rhodes said. “It doesn’t appear that we did learn that lesson in 2011 after we had a similar event, although it wasn’t as bad or didn’t last as long.”
16: Number of deaths in Bexar County
One year later, the power grid saw some improvements.
99%: Number of power plants statewide passed new winterization standards
“At least initially, it looks like maybe the winterization really put in place and inspections are working pretty well,” said Doug Lewin of Stoic Energy.
Yet, energy experts warn the power grid is not completely fixed.
“The same problems that we experienced a year ago, most are still there,” Lewin said. “Some of them have been addressed in significant ways and others have just not been addressed at all.”
One major concern is the natural gas supply chain has not been winterized enough. Most Texas power plants use natural gas for fuel.
“We don’t fix the fuel side, then we just end up with a bunch of power plants that can’t get fuel and we’re in a similar situation,” Rhodes said. “It’s kind of like having a bunch of cars in your driveway that are totally operational, but no gas in the tank. You aren’t going anywhere.”
The natural gas industry is regulated by the Railroad Commission of Texas. It could be another year before it requires changes.
“Technically the Railroad Commission could wait until spring of next year to finalize a weatherization rule,” said Virginia Palacios of Commission Shift, a nonprofit that focuses on reforming oil and gas oversight in Texas. “We haven’t seen enough changes to the natural gas supply chain since last year’s winter storm and what’s worse is that the Railroad Commission knew 10 years ago that it needed to winterize the natural gas supply chain and it failed to act. That’s why we had these devastating power outages during the winter storm. If we don’t get these gas wells weatherized, if don’t have the gas supply chain weatherized, we might not have enough power in the state for everyone.”
Texans still need to be ready should the power go out in the cold, again.
“There have absolutely been material and significant changes that have been made to the power plants and to the infrastructure to reduce the possibility of us having that happen again in the future,” said Jesson Bradshaw of Energy Ogre. “Is it a guarantee? Is it a perfect solution? No.”
Because there is no way to know how long it will be before the next extreme winter weather storm comes to Texas.
A recent study from Rice University showed that while many people viewed the February winter storm as an extreme weather scenario, it was not all that extreme historically.