Electricity is essential to our everyday lives, and our growing economy. Did you know Texas is on course for a power reliability crisis, with the potential for regular rolling blackouts in just a few short years? With low temperatures earlier this week, we narrowly escaped rolling blackouts. We won’t be so lucky in the years ahead if we don’t take action now.

Here are the facts:

• Texas is experiencing the fastest population growth in the country. As we add more than 1,000 people a day, each new Texan and new business increases demand on our grid.

• Our reserve margin – the extra capacity we rely on during extreme weather events to keep the lights on – is dwindling. Soon it will fall to just over half of what we have today.

• Policies coming from Washington D.C. may require Texas to shut down a significant portion of our existing generation fleet.

• It takes an average of three years to build a generation plant. So, if we wait until the crisis is upon us, it will take years to dig our way out.

• Special interests opposed to changes in the electricity market are advancing a false argument: we haven’t had a reliability problem, we currently don’t have a reliability problem, so therefore we never will have a reliability problem. But these special interests are largely unaffected by blackouts under the current system. So when your house or small business loses power, their lights stay on.
  Don't take their word for it...listen to the experts.

• The North American Electricity Reliability Corp., the federally designated regulator for electricity reliability, identified Texas' electricity grid as one of two U.S. "regions standing out as those facing the tightest power reserve margins in the coming decade."

• The Brattle Group, commissioned by the state to study the grid and make recommendations to improve reliability, concluded that the current market design only provides an 8% reserve margin. If Texas had a reserve margin of 8% in the hot summer of 2011, we would likely have had over 40 hours of rolling outages spread over 15 summer days.

• The state selected Independent Market Monitor for our electricity grid has also concluded that the current market design will not support our reliability standard.
  Act Before the Crisis
  The reliability of our power grid is at stake.

  Tell the Public Utility Commission and state lawmakers
  Contact: customer@puc.state.tx.us

  Paid for by Texans for Reliable Power