Companies were paid to cut off power during February storm in Texas

By Charlotte Huffman & Jason Trahan of WFAA. Excerpts:

"Dozens of mostly natural gas facilities, including some directly supplying fuel to power plants around the state, were paid to have their electricity cut off in an emergency like February’s devastating winter storm"

"locations around Texas, were allowed to sign up for a voluntary “emergency response” program coordinated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which runs the state's power grid.

Of those 67 locations receiving payments from ERCOT, at least five sites “later identified themselves to the electric utility as critical natural gas infrastructure,”"

"Natural gas companies were widely criticized after February’s winter storm for not designating parts of their systems' critical infrastructure so that they would not be cut off in an emergency.

"the state did not provide them the names of the companies that own or control the 67 fuel sites that were taking payments in exchange for being on the cut-off list."

"“If an entity is considered critical infrastructure, then it should not be offering to participate in the ERS program,” ERCOT said in a statement late Tuesday, referring to the voluntary Emergency Response Program’s acronym.

ERCOT would not reveal which companies are being paid through the program because it said it doesn't know. ERCOT, according to a spokeswoman, doesn’t actually sign up companies or run the program in-house. It relies on an outside contractor to take the money ERCOT allocates for the program and actually pay the companies that sign up. ERCOT itself also does not cut power to the participating companies."