Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said Texas “will want to connect up to” the U.S. power grid following unprecedented winter weather in the Lone Star State, leading to millions of people without power last week.
Gates appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace following Gov. Greg Abbott’s criticism of alternative energy sources, such as wind energy, he claims led to the power shortage following historic snowstorms across the state.
“Well, it’s not — not at all true,” Gates said. “The failure to weatherize some of the nuclear sensors, the natural gas plants, and even some of the wind are, are responsible for their power shortage. And the wind is a tiny part of it.”
Texas is the only state in the continental United States with a separate power grid, managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, without federal oversight. The unique power grid has enabled Texas, the top U.S. producer of oil and gas, to become one of the major hubs for renewable energy, especially wind power, which makes up roughly 25% of the state’s power resources.
Despite the state’s ability to rely solely on its own energy production, the storm left over 4 million residents without power, and 276 water systems across the state issued temporary advisories for residents to boil water, as local water purification plants were obstructed by the energy crisis.
“It was mostly the thermal generators that went offline, because they haven’t been weatherized,” Gates said. “Obviously, wind works in North Dakota, it works in Alaska. We know how to weatherize wind turbines.”
The trouble with ERCOT’s ability to keep the power on for Texans during the storm caused Abbott to start an investigation with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
Last Tuesday, Abbott said ERCOT “has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours.”
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Abbott and other Republican leaders across the state have been critical of the power crisis and management handling but have not signaled any support toward opening Texas’s grid for connection with the rest of the country.
Thousands across the state are reportedly still without power, according to PowerOutage.US, and millions more are still under boiling water advisories as many water lines were ruptured due to the storm.
A spokesperson from ERCOT told the Washington Examiner, “We fully plan to participate in conversations regarding the ERCOT market design and any other topics that regulators would like to discuss. If lawmakers choose to move in another direction, then we will implement any changes necessary to comply.”
The Texas governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
