The Disconnect: Season 2, Episode 1: The Toll

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

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4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the first episode of Season 2 of The Disconnect, a podcast all about the Texas blackout of February 2021 from FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative partner, the Texas Newsroom, and Austin public radio station KUT, host Mose Buchele and colleagues examine the blackout’s impact on one Texas family, and the accuracy of the state’s official death count.

The Disconnect Season 2 is a project of The Texas Newsroom, the collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in the state. It received support from FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Transcript

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0:00.0	last season on the Disconnect. Texas, unlike any other state in the country, operates its own
0:06.2	independent electric grid. For the first time, we're going to shift the risk of loss from the consumer
0:12.6	over to the utility companies. I want to compliment Senator Sibley of the Senate and member
0:18.3	Steve Rollins of the House, one Republican and one Democrat for enacting some of the most
0:23.3	far-reaching electric deregulation of any state in this United States.
0:29.5	Before deregulation, the state had a 23 percent reserve electricity capacity. By 2019,
0:35.9	it was around 8 percent. Some called it reckless, others called it the very model of efficiency.
0:43.5	At this time, we anticipated we'll need to continue these controlled outages for the rest of
0:48.6	today and at least first part of tomorrow, perhaps all day tomorrow.
0:57.0	Early in Monday morning at 2 a.m., our power went out. We're going on about 30 hours or more.
1:03.8	Over 100 hours. It was a while before I realized it was often going to stay up.
1:10.8	What the Public Utility Commission has done is that it's taken whatever the market is saying
1:15.2	electricity is worth now and it's saying no. It is at $9,000. It is the maximum price.
1:22.3	The promise of the Uricut market is that private capital bears the risks, not the ratepayers.
1:28.4	And this is the time when I think we as regulators have to make sure that the market fulfills that
1:33.2	promise and that it is private capital that bears the risk and this was the risk and the bear.
1:38.8	Historically, our market has focused on affordability first, reliability second. But now,
1:44.4	reliability is first.
1:51.0	I'm Mosbou Shell and this is the Disconnect, Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout.
1:58.8	From KUT. And KUTX.
2:01.3	Studios. After the big blackout, a lot of people tried to tell us that things were under control.
2:09.2	The crisis in Texas last winter must never happen again.
	...

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