Relying More On Wind And Solar, Texas Power Grid Shows Signs Of Strain

Officials at Texas grid manager ERCOT notified customers Monday that the grid could be strained to meet demand on Tuesday and Wednesday due to a shortage of dispatchable reserve capacity. It is the sort of notice from the agency that Texas citizens have become accustomed to receiving in the heat of August and September, but seeing it in mid-April came as a bit of a shock to the system.

Not that it’s unprecedented, of course. It was just three years ago, on April 13, 2021 when ERCOT surprised everyone with a conservation request due to similar grid conditions on what was one of the mildest days of that year. That warning was not quite as big a surprise since it came just two months after the grid’s near-total meltdown during Winter Storm Uri, in which ERCOT was forced to resort to rolling blackouts and millions of Texas suffered through power outages lasting three to four days. (RELATED: DAVID BLACKMON: No Political Movement On Earth Can Match The Hyperbole Of The Climate-Alarm Community)

Even having lived through all of that, seeing the grid already suffering tight conditions on an April day in which high temperatures across most of the state are expected to hover in the mid-80s will inevitably cause Texans to wonder what will happen on August days when the entire state sees highs well above 100 degrees? Such conditions reigned throughout most of last August, during which voluntary conservation requests from ERCOT seemed almost a daily occurrence.

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.