Reforms to Texas' energy grid begin moving after blackout

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas' power grid that buckled during February's deadly winter storm would operate under new oversight and mandates that power plants prepare for more extreme weather under proposed overhauls Tuesday that moved closer but are still far from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's desk.

Six weeks after more than 100 people died in subfreezing weather in Texas, including many of hypothermia, both the GOP-controlled House and Senate have now passed sweeping reforms that lawmakers say would prevent a repeat of the widespread blackouts that spiraled into one of the worst power outages in U.S. history.

But the proposals are far from finalized and big issues remain unsettled, including who will pick up the cost of weatherizing Texas' hundreds of power generators, which Abbott is demanding after plants failed in the cold weather and more than 4 million customers lost electricity.

Many families went without water and heat for days with no indication of when the power might be restored. One bill that easily cleared the Texas House on Tuesday is designed to force power companies to better communicate the extent of the outages in the middle of a blackout.

“They couldn't even tell Texans that they were in danger,” said Democratic state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, whose district runs along the U.S.-Mexico border. "There was an expectation in your district and in mine that the power was going to come back on at any minute, that we were all going to share in the burden. But what we experienced was it wasn't that easy to turn the lights back on."

Managers of the state's embattled power grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, have said the outages were necessary to avert an even more catastrophic blackout that could have lasted weeks. The state's top energy regulators resigned in wake of the outages and outgoing...