Just as we figured, the Texas Power Scandal is growing, and it’s going to be as bad as we feared.  It turns out that the Abbott appointees to the PUC have been systematically undoing safety and reliability protocols put in place after the 2011 power grid failure.  In November of last year, the PUC unilaterally canceled the contract with the Texas Reliability Entity, the outside entity which had been monitoring compliance of Texas power grid since the FERC delegated congressional authority to a private non-profit corporation to monitor the national grid.  No entity replaced Texas RE, so no one was minding the store on compliance, winterizing, and reliability.

Even worse, the previous July, the PUC disbanded the Oversight and Enforcement Division, firing it’s chief attorney and reassigning the rest of the staff within the agency.  This committee had been charged with overseeing power providers’ operations and enforcing safety and reliability rules.

So, Greg Abbott, whose appointees had dismantled the PUC’s safety and compliance functions of Texas power producers, is now calling for heads to roll – the heads that he appointed himself.  I think he can start the rolling with his own.