Great Lakes Wire

As Texas begins to recover from last week's winter storms, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has issued an update to its letter sent to Michigan lawmakers last week containing recommendations about what Michigan can learn from the Lone Star State's difficulties.

"More complete information on the Texas electricity grid is coming out, and the failures and rolling blackouts seem to stem from three major issues," the Mackinac Center's environment policy director, Jason Hayes, said in his update to his blog post originally published on Feb. 16.

Hayes' update took particular aim at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state's electrical grid and manages the deregulated market for about three-quarters of the state.

Jason Hayes | Mackinac Center for Public Policy

"First, there was poor planning and slow responses on the part of ERCOT, the operator of Texas’ electricity grid," Hayes wrote in his update. "Second, decisions were made against winterizing essential generation equipment, despite similar cold-related outages in 2011. Third, extreme and unusual cold weather impacted multiple generation sources: wind, solar, nuclear, coal and natural gas."

The update to what had caused the outages changed the current reporting of the situation, but it doesn't change the effects it could have on long-term decisions being made in Texas, Michigan and other states, according to Hayes.

"For the good of Michigan residents, Michigan’s electricity utilities need to return their focus to safe, reliable generation options," Hayes wrote on the Mackinac Center's website.

The update follows an open letter that Hayes sent earlier in the week, urging Michigan state lawmakers to learn from Texas' mistakes and its current energy crisis.

Early in the extreme weather situation, many political leaders, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), blamed Texas' wind turbines and other forms of renewable energy. Those claims have since been debunked, including reports in The Texas Tribune, USA Today and the Houston Chronicle.

At the height of the storms, Fortune offered a more thorough outage explanation, reporting that most of Texas' energy, in its very complicated and largely privatized grid, comes from natural gas, coal and nuclear plants, "which together make up more than two-thirds of power generation during winter."

Despite this explanation, Hayes maintained that that wind turbines in Texas have proven "reliably unreliable" and should not become the basis for any power grid.

"'Reliably unreliable' may work in mathematical models or when it’s sunny and 75 degrees, but it is potentially dangerous when the real world gives us cloudy and minus 20 degrees. It’s also a poor argument in favor of the drive to build more renewables," Hayes wrote, according to the Mackinac Center. "Spending billions to build energy sources that cannot be depended on when people need them most is irresponsible."