ROLLING BLACKOUTS:... Still An Option As Texas Fights Summer Heat...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | Scorching July and the Dog Days of August may be gone, but Texans are still thisclose to losing their electricity at home from one moment to the next. Temperatures remain in the low-100-degree range across the state and demand has been taxing the state's electrical grid like never before.

Rolling blackouts remain on the table. Those are undertaken to allow Texans to share the pain of life without electrical power. How long they last is always anybody's guess.

Hope that one doesn't come your way today. And, sure, all you have to do is look out the window to see that the sun is still blazing, and that the day is going to be another moving sauna.

But here's a bit more info from a report at austinchronicle.com: [ Last night, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) issued its first energy emergency alert since 2021’s winter storm.

Record-breaking heat (read: demand) has caused Texans to almost expect weekly calls for voluntary conservation – yesterday around 6pm marked ERCOT’s 10th call since the summer began. But soon after, power reserves began dropping precipitously, and ERCOT issued a Level 2 emergency alert – the level right below rolling blackouts. Extreme heat has been extending the need for cranked AC longer into the evening as solar power simultaneously winds down, making that the tightest time for the grid; but this was much tighter than usual.

ERCOT has three levels of emergency alerts, and is supposed to call Level 1 first when supply and demand lines get too close. Level 1 allows ERCOT to pull all available energy resources, Level 2 allows it to pay large industrial customers like bitcoin miners to conserve energy, and Level 3 means rolling blackouts. ERCOT went straight to a Level 2 alert, skipping right over Level 1, around 7:30pm last night. Energy experts also pointed out that what got us through was partly battery storage, which provided a spike of 2,000 megawatts of power between 7 and 8pm. ]

Know this: Expect another "conservation alert" from your electricity provider later today.

Those have become a daily occurrence, I know.

But that's where we are.

Texas has its own electrical grid and is not hooked up to any of the country's other grids, and that includes neighboring states which, if we had the capability, would absolutely help the situation when the need for additional power arises.

Mexico is always another option...

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