Almost unbelievably, officials at Texas grid manger ERCOT felt the need to put out a warning Monday about a possible shortage of reserve capacity developing on the Texas power grid in the middle of the month of April. I say “almost” unbelievably because, hey, it’s totally believable these days, isn’t it?
Of course it is. After all, it was just two years ago, on April 15, 2022, when ERCOT was so short of reserve capacity that it issued a conservation request to power users to limit energy usage during peak afternoon and evening hours. Doing the same thing again this week is just par for the ERCOT course.
To be fair to ERCOT officials, they’re just managing the lousy hand they’ve been dealt thanks to more than a decade of neglect by the state’s power generators and regulators. Those parties all received ample warning of the looming crisis on the Texas grid in February 2011, when a severe winter storm forced previous ERCOT management to resort to rolling blackouts to avoid a grid failure.
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