Ex-ERCOT chief says Abbott directed freeze blackouts to stop before decision to run up billions in bills

The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that he was following the direction of Governor Greg Abbott when the grid manager ordered wholesale power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies. Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said even as power plants were starting come back online, former Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker told him that Abbott wanted them to do whatever necessary to prevent further rotating blackouts that left millions of Texans without power. “She told me the governor had conveyed to her if we emerged from rotating outages it was imperative they not resume,” Magness testified. “We needed to do what we needed to do to make it happen.”

Last year the governor's spokesman, Mark Miner, said Abbott was not “involved in any way” in the decision to keep wholesale electricity prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour – more than 150 times normal prices. He described a decision to send an aide to ERCOT's operations center in the middle of the crisis as based on the feeling the grid operator was spewing “disinformation." "As Texans would expect, Governor Abbott instructed everyone involved that they must do what was needed to keep the power on and to prevent the loss of life,” Miner said in an email Wednesday. “This is the same instruction Governor Abbott gave to the PUC and ERCOT (during a cold snap) earlier this year: Do what needs to be done to keep the power on.” The decision to keep power prices at the maximum cap is now at the center of a bankruptcy trial waged by the Waco-based electric co-op Brazos Electric. Brazos contends that decision was made recklessly, adding up to a $1.9 billion power bill from ERCOT that forced co-op into bankruptcy.