Last month marked one year since Winter Storm Uri arrived in Texas and caused tremendous devastation throughout our state.

As the storm started making its way through Texas, Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of emergency for all 254 counties in preparation for the expected winter weather. For an entire week, temperatures stayed below freezing which led to Texans turning up the heat, triggering a sudden spike in energy demand.

This spike in energy demand coupled with the record-setting low temperatures, which resulted in the freezing of energy-producing equipment, ultimately led to the malfunction of our state’s electrical grid. Rolling blackouts turned into outages that lasted several days and left millions without power, some without water, and sadly, 210 Texans lost their lives. As bad as the weather event was, it nearly got a whole lot worse in that Texas was just 4 minutes and 37 seconds away from a total blackout.

Given the electric reliability problems associated with the winter storm, Governor Abbott asked lawmakers during the 87th Legislative Session to reform the Electric Reliability Council of Texas

(ERCOT), the state’s power grid operator. The House and Senate both held committee hearings to go over the devastating storm and investigate the events that led to our electrical grid’s catastrophic failures with the goal of coming up with the necessary changes to avoid future power interruptions.

As a member of the House Committee on Energy Resources, I was able to be a part of the joint hearing between the Energy Resources and State Affairs Committees, where we heard from key players in the events that had occurred just one week prior. The legislature quickly got to work and we passed a number of bills to overhaul our electrical grid.

This included legislation that requires the weatherization of energy-producing infrastructure, provides oversight of ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission’s (PUC) membership, designates certain facilities as critical during an energy emergency, as well as legislation that would protect consumers by banning the sale of wholesale indexed products by retail electric providers to residential customers.

When Winter Storm Landon rolled in last month, there is no denying it brought back the fears we all felt with the last winter storm. Was our electrical grid going to withstand the freezing temperatures? Would there be rolling blackouts again? Thankfully, those concerns were just that, concerns.

The enhancements and additional regulations the legislature put in place for the state’s energy and electric industries, as well as its heightened oversight on the agencies who oversee our electrical grid, ensured the lights stayed on in Texas for this event and for any future weather event of that magnitude. While there is still more that can be done, these improvements to our electrical grid ensure stability to our grid for years to come.

Representative Ben Leman is the State Representative for House District 13 which includes Austin, Burleson, Colorado, Fayette, Grimes, Lavaca, and Washington counties.