Gov. Abbott Meets with Electricity Industry Leaders While Power Grid Continues to Hold After Reforms

AUSTIN – Governor Greg Abbott held a meeting with Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) leadership Tuesday to discuss the ongoing implementation of grid reforms to ensure continued reliability and stability. The Governor also received a briefing on the Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy (SARA) report to make sure Texas' electric grid continues meeting demand.

The Governor was joined by ERCOT Interim President and CEO Brad Jones, PUC Chairman Peter Lake, and Incoming CEO of ERCOT Pablo Vegas. Vegas will assume his role as CEO of ERCOT on October 1, 2022. 

During the meeting, the Governor was briefed on the Texas electric grid's strong position heading into the fall season and discussed ways that reforms put in place by the State of Texas continue to make the grid stronger, more reliable, and resilient. The Governor also discussed ERCOT's updated planned outage scheduling process which ensures Texas' generational fleet has the necessary time to conduct maintenance operations. These maintenance operations, conducted during the fall, will increase greater grid reliability. 

"The State of Texas continues to monitor the reliability of our electric grid, and I thank ERCOT and PUC for their hard work to implement bipartisan reforms we passed last year and for their proactive leadership to ensure our grid is stronger than ever before," said Governor Abbott. "The beginning of this fall season also marks a new season for ERCOT as we welcome its new CEO, Pablo Vegas. Pablo will be joining ERCOT with an exceptional background in the energy industry, and I look forward to working with him as we continue to build upon the exemplary job that Brad Jones has done as Interim CEO."

"Going into the fall, we have sufficient resources to meet demand for power, and we’re very excited to welcome ERCOT’s new president and CEO, Pablo Vegas back to Texas in October," said PUC Chairman Peter Lake. "As our record-setting summer winds down, now is no time to rest. We will continue to ensure the grid is reliable using all the tools we have, including closely managing outages generators need to take for maintenance."