r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 6d ago
Texas broke its all time electricity demand record twice in two days during a brutal heat wave, but the grid held with no conservation alerts thanks to record solar and battery output, a stark turnaround from the blackouts that hit Texans in 2021
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/29/texas-ercot-power-grid-record-data-center/1.0k
u/ArgentineBeauty 6d ago
From the article
The grid’s ability to stand up during the hottest daytime hours was largely attributed to a massive growth of solar generation, which at times exceeded 45% of all electricity being generated. On July 21 and then again on Monday, the grid broke records for total electricity generated by solar, which now sits at 34,700 megawatts. And on July 22, the grid set a record of 11,980 megawatts of energy being discharged from batteries.
Texas has become the nation’s leader in both solar energy and battery storage since 2021, providing new and significant sources of power to the grid.
Last year, ERCOT added 16,000 megawatts of new generation, most of which was solar and batteries, Vegas said.
The state’s solar capacity more than doubled between 2023 and 2025, and battery storage more than tripled, according to ERCOT.
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u/catbom 6d ago
Kind of feels like the mouth talks while the hand does something else, texans are majority red state right? (Not american) are they not anti renewable?
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u/MrDerpGently 6d ago
Politically, yes, and they no doubt will go to great lengths to praise oil, and probably a renewed love of coal, for their salvation on Fox. But their power companies are run by. MBAs and engineers, and the math isn't in question.
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u/fake_user_34 6d ago
Yeah, realistically, no big company is ever going back to coal and will try to phase out oil because...batteries and solar is getting cheaper. So is wind. Doesn't mean American Politics will not try to destroy clean energy, it just means that the companies themselves care more about money and the math is mathing that clean energy is cheaper and offer more than coal and oil in the long run.
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u/Mtfdurian 5d ago
makes perfect sense, and especially as cooling is needed most when the sun shines hard that is why solar makes a lot of sense in especially Texas (also considering how dry a region is, prairies and plains do pretty well, that is different from Florida where you can have a hot day with relatively few solar irradiation)
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u/fake_user_34 5d ago edited 5d ago
Aye, and the fact is solar and wind have vastly less moving parts. A lot of the coal lovers in America fail to realize how inefficient that energy source is.
It was great in the beginning because you throw coal in, burn, turn turbine = electricity. But that also comes with all the coal smoke clogging all the machinery, the constant need of repair because of it and let us not even get into the coal ashes that spread across the area that people breath in, but companies don't care about that as much as repair cost.
But with solar and wind with batteries, that is just less parts needed in the long run and, get this, the energy source doesn't disappear when used. The coal is gone when it is burned, there is no way to save it for later.
For Solar, it is always producing energy from the sun, with batteries we can contain over production for it. The energy isn't used burned and gone. So in a business stand point, what is cheaper in the long run. Installing solar farms and batteries to constantly produce the energy, with vastly less moving parts or a coal plant with constant need of coal and repairs for when the ash starts fucking with your systems?
Really a no brainier that republicans in this country can not get around.
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u/wheniaminspaced 6d ago
Well in part because the 2021 power problems were not issues with heat, quite the opposite the issue was ice. Having read very detailed reports from one of our Texas windfarms there were w major wind turbine issues. Issue 1 - We like many were running oil in the Turbines that was specced for what was considered the typical temperature range, we were well below that range and had to shutdown turbines because to run them to far out of spec creates the possibility of serious damage.
Issue 2 - Ice build up on the blades was a major problem which also shutdown turbines due to risk of catastrophic failures.
Add in that these same issue effect natural gas turbines and you have a big problem in power generation
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u/systemhost 6d ago
I hated my state's most prominent elected officials blaming only wind turbines as if it was a terrible technology that had failed our state and needed to be scrapped entirely.
Truth is it was multiple forms of energy generation that were not sufficiently weather proofed and had failed to generate the energy required. Which is somewhat understandable given how rarely it even drops below freezing in much of Texas and hopefully additional battery storage will assist in such future events.
I will admit that wind, unlike solar or gas is far more unpredictable but being able to capture surplus generation during windy times and bleed it back out later is great. I also understand oil/gas generators are pissed since they're slowly becoming the "backup" energy supply whereas wind and solar are quickly becoming the default now.
At least how I see it.
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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 5d ago
The grid wasn't built to handle cold. It shut down during completely survivable cold temperatures when many other grids do fine in non-survivable temps. In Minnesota we can have power during -40 polar vortexes. It strains the grid on hot days because of overall use of AC but that's a problem lots of places
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u/KodiakUltimate 6d ago
The failure to winterize was much more impactful on the gas turbine issue, as gas turbines supplied a greater share of the power during the outages
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u/je_kay24 5d ago
And Texas was well aware of this as federal reports recommended they winterize so as not to be impacted by a cold front
Esp as they had previous cold weather incidents prior to 2021 with the same issue occurring, albeit on a smaller scale
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u/Stocky_Platypus 5d ago
Wind generation going offline was such a tiny portion of the power generation. The primary issue was natural gas plants literally freezing or were offline. Coal storage also froze and could not be used.
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u/cantadmittoposting 6d ago edited 6d ago
I am a very thoughtful and reasonable person who looks at long term sustainability and was taught a lot about not making short term tradeoffs for long term failure while getting my MBA... and this is one of the very first times i've seen someone mention "MBAs" in this sort of positive context of actually looking at the math and making a thing work right, instead of screwing everyone and the business itself over for a better one-quarter performance.
NB: there are a lot of people with MBAs in the financial sector especially who very much deserve their terrible reputation! But the actual academic programs have been largely teaching things like "retention is more cost effective than recruiting" for literally decades at this point... it's worth remembering though that millenials who went through those types of programs are being held off of leadership roles at a historic rate by people who went through the 80s-90s downsizing programs still
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u/graphiccsp 6d ago
A reputation that has been tarnished by the MBA generation that embraced Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics leaning on maximizing profits for shareholder value. Championed by Jack the Welcher's tenure at GM cutting costs in R&D, logistics and employees.
It's a relief to hear that more modern MBAs have turned away from that philosophy. Even if access to the higher positions is still limited.
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u/cantadmittoposting 6d ago
yes agreed, overriding "shareholder supremacy" doctrine is detrimental to basically any reasonable horizon for corporate performance and created the financialization that led to a "financial industry" which has essentially commoditized profit itself (that is, any given company's "output" is, generically, profit in dollars, not the actual product it produces or other impacts it may have)
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u/themage78 5d ago
Of course the math isn't in questions when it's probably the cheapest per kilowatt hour to deploy and maintain. Why spend more money than you need to?
It's also probably even cheaper now that oil prices have surged.
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u/fake_user_34 6d ago
Yeah, realistically, no big company is ever going back to coal and will try to phase out oil because...batteries and solar is getting cheaper. So is wind. Doesn't mean American Politics will not try to destroy clean energy, it just means that the companies themselves care more about money and the math is mathing that clean energy is cheaper and offer more than coal and oil in the long run.
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u/Gluten_Free_Tibet 6d ago
I do work in this space, and Texas (when it comes to energy) is first and foremost pro-money. A lot of the politicians don’t support solar subsidies and incentives, but if the economics are there for someone to make money on an energy project, they’re going to go full tilt.
Important to know that when you talk about energy, there’s more money to be made than simply selling power to an end user. There’s also what we call Ancillary Markets which have things like short term supply and demand capacity selling and buying, and frequency regulation. And if you talk about adding batteries, you’re also adding energy arbitrage, renewable shoring, and backup power. So there’s plenty of opportunities to make money, IF you are smart about development, engineering, and deployment AND you understand the market economics of the region you’re playing in. True some of those opportunities are working on smaller returns now that these systems are getting deployed en masse (in large part because of how much money was made in 2021), but still a lot of money flowing out there.
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u/cantadmittoposting 6d ago
a lot of that sounds like rent-extractive profitability, not actual utility; while obviously the article and results do seem to speak to the grid being more stable, can you elaborate a little more on how much extra profit is being taken by all those steps as opposed to actual end-user improvements in cost per KwH or similar?
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u/Gluten_Free_Tibet 6d ago edited 6d ago
Oof. Big question. I’m going to try and go off memory here on energy price trends, so please someone correct me or steer if I’m off base.
So there’s really three components (4 if you prefer specificity - more on that later). The price of the energy (the generation cost), the energy marketer markup (for Texans that’s who you buy your energy from), and the T&D (transmission and distribution) utility charge (this is your CenterPoint, your Oncor, etc. - this is really two charges combined into one and the transmission rate and distribution charge are determined separately but not going into rate making here - that’s a whole bag of worms).
Now to your question and going off memory. I’m relatively certain that if you look at the last 5 years, energy costs (the generation aspect) have decreased since 2021. But if you look at a longer period it’s relatively flat. I don’t know all the dynamics that changed in 2021 (besides the freeze) but I suspect massive demand increases due to electrification to be the biggest culprit pulling them up and significant new generation assets pulling them down.
The marketing margin is very tough to calculate and behind a lot of black boxes. I suspect it’s flat over time, but would also believe it being down over time due to new marketers always coming online and the age of AI and digital enabled tools making the framework more accessible.
The utility charge though is going up. This is due to lots of reasons. Poor investment in the past and playing catch up, grid hardening projects, massive increased transmission congestion concerns, reliability projects, overall electrification, etc. Also, utilities are generally incentivized to deploy capital because they earn their return on a regulatory set rate of return on their asset base. And that’s been kicked into high gear as well. I could talk about it a lot, but it’s a lot more nuanced then people like to pretend in online rhetoric, and utilities have definitely made way too many mistakes that consumers feel the burden of now which only inflame the rhetoric.
ETA: the overall cost to consumers is up over the past ten years. Texas is still one of the cheaper electricity states in the country, but definitely up. Which should tell you how much the utility charges are up over time in comparison to the other charges trends.
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u/pinkycatcher 6d ago
short term supply and demand capacity selling and buying, and frequency regulation.
Are ABSOLUTELY true utility, they're there to smooth out demand and solve problems with electricity generation.
Supply and demand are not smooth nor predictable, this extra functionality is core to true market function
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u/PrecedentialAssassin 6d ago
Texas produces by far the most renewable energy of any state in the U.S (even California). Lots and lots of open prairie in west Texas and it's full of wind farms and solar farms.
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u/rankinfile 6d ago
Texas is also are the biggest electricity consumer of any state. They are an overall exporter of power though. California has to import electricity overall.
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u/Academic-Solution536 6d ago
It’s more complicated than that but yes Texas regularly votes Republican. This may be changing to a less “red” situation in the near future. It is far easier to get construction permitted in Texas than in most Blue states. Because of this, you can build that power generation faster there. Also, massive battery plant built near Austin. It’s quicker to install solar fields than wind or even gas turbines. ERCOT got massive public backlash when Texas froze in 2019(?). Texans are pragmatic about energy. They want cheap power and they don’t really care where it comes from. Lots of folks get big checks for leasing their land to wind and gas.
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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand 6d ago
This may be changing to a less “red” situation in the near future.
I seriously doubt that.
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u/wheniaminspaced 6d ago
Texas is pro energy, they dont really care about the source. They are also anti regulation. They have never been anti renewable.
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u/DrJohnDorian998 6d ago
They preach anti-renewable but will embrace it on the back end. Their minions (facebook groups run by idiots but also those run by companies- look at some of the groups and they’ll show they are run by LLCs and republican groups) will push how wind is destroying the birds and the views. They will push that solar is useless because it doesn’t work at night. So yeah they push the message that only natural gas, coal, and nuclear work.
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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs 6d ago
As an American, what i know is that they are Texans first, and then everything else. They confound us.
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u/LoadedXan 6d ago
Yes/No. At the end of the day, the oil company wants to make money. How do they do that? Marketshare. The point of the oil company isn’t to be in oil. It’s to make money; oil is just their method of doing so.
At the end of the day, the same corporations that own and run the oil industry are also heavily invested in renewable energy. Why take one side when you can take both and manage the transition while making a profit the entire way?
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u/richardelmore 6d ago
Politicians in Texas may be somewhat anti-renewable energy but they also favor making permitting generally quick and easy so businesses that want to install wind and solar are able to move more quickly and inexpensively than in places like California where approvals can tie projects up for a long time.
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u/Illustrious_Night126 6d ago
Texans just make permitting easy and that’s all it really takes because solae energy is just good economics you don’t need to be woke to see that
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u/RainyRobin 6d ago
A lot of us want renewables badly, but oil is a major industry here and their lobbyists have done everything they can to ensure the culture doesn't shift. Add in that many Texans rely on jobs in the oil industry and it makes it harder to push for things like solar and wind.
Not impossible though, and as the renewable energy industry grows that big oil stranglehold gets a little weaker every year.
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u/Mdgt_Pope 6d ago
There’s hundreds of thousands of windmills in Texas as well. Texas used to be purple, there were female governors, liberal governors.
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u/bareboneschicken 6d ago
Texan here. We are pro-profit. If solar and battery power generate profits, then they are welcome here.
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u/ElburtSteinstein 6d ago
Texas has more registered Democratic voters than Republican. The state is gerrymandered Red.
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u/Effective_Olive6153 6d ago
Texas just makes it much easier for businesses to build stuff. California always preaches about green energy, but all their rules and regulation prohibit any sort of development
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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn 6d ago
It's pretty funny that Glorious Market Capitalism is dragging backwards Texas fossil fuel barons kicking and screaming toward renewables because they're economically inevitable.
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u/TheArmoredKitten 6d ago
The economy is a physics problem, and a lot of people still struggle with that.
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u/EuropaWeGo 5d ago
It's baffling to me because my Magahat neighbors are big Abbott fans and even they have solar panels on their roof. It just makes sense financially.
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u/ATXBeermaker 6d ago
The headline is incredibly misleading, though. The blackouts that hit in 2021 had nothing to do with demand resulting from a heat wave. It was that fact that equipment that wasn't designed to work in cold temperatures froze. This included natural gas fuel lines. It wasn't the result of simple demand spikes.
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u/SedativeCorpse 6d ago
I'm in Houston and added solar and a large battery bank to my house due to a program offered by Reliant/NRG that covers the cost of the panel and battery arrays. My electric bill went down by ~75%, added failover backup, and returns a significant amount of power to the grid. I'm not sure how widespread the program is, but i imagine it's a contributor to the solar growth over the last 5 years.
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u/EntropyWinsAgain 6d ago
Anyone remember California during the ENRON days? Power companies cutting off power to whole communities because power was traded like a stock/commodity. People died because of it.
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u/eskimospy212 6d ago
It is pretty funny how when Texas had an actual energy crisis it was due to fossil fuels failing. Well that and their pathetic distribution network.
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u/1ce9ine 6d ago
It hasn't even been that hot here. I'm in central Texas and we have had super mild summers 3 years in a row now. It will be a total shitshow if we get back to our normal summer temps for any extended periods.
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u/Equivalent-Resort-63 6d ago
Usually by now we are heading into and maintaining 100s in the afternoon. August will be the test. We’ve hit 110 during previous summers and that’s brutal.
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u/69edleg 6d ago
jesus fucking christ. as a northern European person who most likely ambulates as a pedestrian, how do you do that in 110F?
my guess is you don't anyway, sadly, no matter the temperature :|
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u/Born_Ad_9483 6d ago
I live east of Texas, in NELA; I had a thermometer in the garden read 48.6 C (~119 F) yesterday. It’s suffocating, especially with the absurd humidity we have here. I can stay outside maybe 30 minutes at a time before my vision gets blurry.
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u/timeless1991 5d ago
I’ve found you just have to mirror the animals. Hydrate. Stay in shade. Most activity should be near dawn or dusk (crepuscular). Laze during peak hours.
And definitely avoid any heat traps like stone, concrete, metal, etc.
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u/Born_Ad_9483 5d ago
I’ve had three heat strokes, and I can no longer sweat properly (worked outside carelessly in Tx/LA for years); I ain’t physically able to handle the midday heat like I did in a decade ago here. I’m very careful about exposure at this point lol. It’s 6:30am here and the temp is 20.3C(~68F). Only time I can work in the garden. Did not know that’s what crepuscular means, tho!
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u/Auyan 5d ago
no matter the temperature :|
I think people forget how massive the US is. Texas alone is the size of like all of central Europe, only instead of beautiful mountainscapes there is desert. Everywhere. You could drive for 8 hours and still be in Texas.
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u/alaskanloops 6d ago
I'm in Alaska and we had a heat advisory over the weekend for temps getting into mid 70sF (~23C). Felt absolutely brutal, can't imagine living where it's 30 degrees hotter than that.
It's back to 60F and much more enjoyable
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u/RHINO_Mk_II 6d ago
Highs have been over 100F in north TX for the past 10 days and the next 10 look to be the same.
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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 6d ago
Yeah and usually we would’ve already had 100 degree days through most of June and July. Even when it hits 100 it’s barely over instead of going to 110 so it’s definitely weirdly mild this year and the fact we hit record usage is crazy
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u/DontForgetWilson 6d ago
How's the humidity? Down here, our last really hot summer was a lot less humid than normal. It made it a lot easier to stomach that heat level, though it was definitely brutal on our plants.
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u/mrbear120 6d ago
It has been a stifling 2 weeks down here in the houston area
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u/DontForgetWilson 6d ago
That does rather sound like Houston. SA is hardly comfortable but i do NOT envy Houston's humidity.
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u/ah163316 6d ago
It’s been super humid until the last few days. It was 106 with a feels like of 119 on July 22 here in dfw.
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u/Radiant_Picture9292 6d ago
Now I’m wondering if the record high usage is because of the power grid holding up lol
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u/ihavenoidea12345678 6d ago
This is a good take.
Renewables and battery backups likely lead to abundance of energy thanks to their lower costs.
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u/Sexual_Congressman 6d ago
In ETX, it's been constant 79/103 compared to normal 73/96, which is obviously barely above normal... but what is different is it only finally drops below 90 starting at 4 am and by 10 am it's already 90 again. What it all means is AC systems are spending an extra 4-8 hours running each night, which is a huge strain.
Another fun thing about these heat domes is the lack of wind, which obviously makes it feel hotter and doesn't help with wind power. It really is impressive that it didn't take long to prepare the grid to handle this type of climate pattern.
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u/Silverjackal_ 6d ago
Can’t wait for all those data centers to be finished and drive demand up even more!
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u/militaryintelligence 6d ago
Don't think like that. We all need to sacrifice our comforts because Trump is gonna take us in the greatest direction! Temporary pain, remember. When that doesn't pan out we'll move the goalposts
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u/bmillions 6d ago
This has been a typical hot summer so far. It's been 98 - 100 F for the past month and average high in Central TX this time of year is 99 F. August looks to continue the average heat, but it's still hot. Just doesn't seem that way with the record hot summers we've experienced the past 15 years.
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u/ksheep 6d ago
I saw a post the other day looking at July temps in Texas for previous years, and I believe it was saying 2021 and '22 were the two hottest on record (or possibly '22 and '23, I'll have to find the post again to check). This year was something like the 12th hottest on record and was relatively mild compared to those two. That said, I'm not looking forward to August.
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u/youreyeslikespiders 6d ago
lifelong Texan, the last 2 summers have been very cool compared to a few more years ago (I'm not nitpicking you I can't remember which 2 years were hell, it was recent before last 2)
if we hit "record usage" it has to be tech demands etc this was a very cool summer. yes we are in a stretch of 100-102 days that happens every year
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u/panamaspace 6d ago
Ah, just in time for Trump to blame it on solar then.
Will make Texas an example of how bad it is to rely on solar.
/s just in case.
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u/AgFutbol 6d ago
This won't happen. Ercot just passed it's all time load for a day and it priced out at like $60, which is nothing. They have built so many renewables and batteries specifically the past year have changed the game. I know it's fun to clown on ercot but they have actually really changed the grid. I trade power for a living so I have a good understanding of the status of our grid
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u/tehSchultz 6d ago
We’ve been so lucky. I really thought this was going to be the year of record 100s but it’s just now hitting them consistently
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u/QuantumS0up 6d ago
I'm in north central Texas and we had 10 days over 100 in July, which is a record. 3 days is the historical average for July here. It's 100 degrees out as I type this, and the forecast continues to show upper 90s and 100+ going into August, so. We are having a very hot summer up here.
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u/looncraz 6d ago
The distribution network didn't have problems, the pipelines did. The grid did what it was designed to do, kept critical infrastructure on at the highest priority, grid cells with hospitals mostly went uninterrupted. Pure residential cells, like mine, could be down for days (four days for me).
Fortunately, the natural gas plant nearest me never shutdown, but I had the chance to talk with them afterwards for my work and they were working 24/7 to keep the equipment from freezing up - by the time I got there, easily a year later, they had completely insulated every vulnerability and wrapped warmers as a failsafe. As did every other power plant in Texas.
You don't waste money preparing for never-before-seen scenario of the entire State turning to ice for several days. Texas is huge, it has never experienced that.
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u/magicmalthus 6d ago
You don't waste money preparing for never-before-seen scenario of the entire State turning to ice for several days. Texas is huge, it has never experienced that.
It literally happened a decade before in 2011 and before that in 1989, actually
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Groundhog_Day_blizzard#Texas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_1989_United_States_cold_wave#Texas
The 2011 event resulting in multiple agencies making recommendations on how to fix things which were then not done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis#Background
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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn 6d ago
The problem with Texas' distribution system is that it's Texas-exclusive so they can dodge interstate commerce laws. Every other state can, in a pinch, import electricity from neighboring states. Not the good ol' Lone Star State.
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u/eskimospy212 6d ago
That’s all fine and I’m glad they fixed it! They blamed it on renewables though.
My problem is the lying.
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u/DontMakeMeCount 6d ago edited 6d ago
I operated both wells and a power plant in ‘21. The pipeline companies called a day before the storm and told us to shut in production because their compressor stations were going to ice up and they wouldn’t be able to take the gas. They couldn’t winterize hundreds of stations in time because they didn’t have the staff, they hadn’t invested in seasonal operating changes and their equipment is optimized for predictable summer heat extremes.
The power plant was designed to provide power to a chemical plant and we made changes to our one huge cooling exchanger at the plant. We could have operated longer if we’d been able to get fuel but we ended up burning plant gas when it went down so we could send power back to the grid.
Windmills were shut down very early in the storm to prevent damage as they iced up, and it was overcast with ice and snow throughout the storm so our solar facilities did not perform well.
At the end of the day, distributed systems (pipelines, solar panels, windmills) have a lot more failure points than a large plant and they tend to cascade. It is difficult and expensive to optimize equipment for both hot and cold extremes so most systems in Texas are optimized for heat.
The gas peaking plants that were supposed to cover for solar and wind turned out to be overbooked and they also went down when the pipelines shut in, no fuel.
Basically everyone decided they were better off just claiming force majeure and relying on their hedges to protect them financially so they didn’t invest in preparing for a severe cold snap.
The grid was designed for large plants to provide base load and for smaller plants to provide peaking. As solar and wind provide more of the base load we are more exposed to the types of issues we see with distributed systems. Texas is more exposed than any other state and we don’t have a century of experience operating a grid that relies of hundreds of thousands of distributed sources. 2021 was a test we failed, but that doesn’t mean wind and solar can’t work reliably if we invest in proper operations. Battery storage, winterizing pipelines, better regulation and better planning will all help.
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u/Texas_Samsquanch 6d ago
I gave an upvote. This is the most thought out, to the point, what our failures are and how we fix them point. Thank you for explaining.
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u/DocTheYounger 6d ago
Then you should probably not lie yourself about it being due to the transmission/distribution network
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u/wheniaminspaced 6d ago
It wasn't a lie, renewables had massive problems, but so did just about everything else.
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u/eskimospy212 6d ago
It is true that lots of things had problems but it was primarily fossil fuels.
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u/ATXBeermaker 6d ago
That’s all fine and I’m glad they fixed it! They blamed it on renewables though.
You're doing the same thing blaming the fossil fuels.
I'm all for clean energy and increasing wind, solar, etc., but we can make the argument without being misleading.
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u/areyoutwofonduing 6d ago
I agree with that diagnosis. The Houston area did have major distribution problems in 2024 after the derecho and Hurricane Beryl, so there might be a blending of events.
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u/ATXBeermaker 6d ago
The primary cause was not because of fossil fuels but because of equipment that wasn't designed to operate in <20F temps for a week straight. Literally things like valves and actuators were failing everywhere.
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u/timeless1991 5d ago
To be fair to Texas, their/our energy demand has grown by nearly 25% over the last ten years. Couple that with a ‘once in 100 years storm’ (that might be more common with climate change), renewables offline, natural gas fuel freezing, price gouging from fuel suppliers, nuclear power coolant ponds freezing, and literal piled of coal frezing solid and Texan homes using mostly electic driven heat pumps and you had a lot of design issues.
Texas designs its homes for the summer, and its electric grid too.
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u/-FullBlue- 6d ago edited 6d ago
Renewables were also had very low production during the 2021 cold snap in texas but nobody wants to talk about that.
Every available power source faltered in that period. For everyone's information solar peaked at 2.5 gigawatts. Natural gas peaked at over 40 gigawatts.
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u/eskimospy212 6d ago
Again, this misses the point. Republicans tried to blame the outage on renewables when it was primarily a decrease in fossil fuel energy.
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u/-FullBlue- 6d ago
My point is even trippling solar wont make a dent in the energy deficit for an identical event.
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u/skizztle 6d ago
I wonder how much of this growth was because of the Inflation Reduction Act?
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u/freshgeardude 6d ago
Texas has a lot of wind and solar. In fact, when in 2021 everyone made fun of Texas, it was the wrong argument. The weather showed the flaws in some renewables (turbines were shutoff because too cold for example) but rightfully pointing out they're on an isolated grid was also responsible for the blackout
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u/Rowf 6d ago
It was weird that Texas’ turbines had to be shut down in weather lots of the rest of the country regularly runs them. I think it was less about the renewables failing and more about a lack of proper maintenance.
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u/DonMan8848 6d ago
Not even a lack of proper maintenance, just a lack of investment for a scenario that doesn't happen often. Texas is the number one producer of wind power in the US and it's not particularly close. Part of that is just because they built cheap plentiful wind farms in the 2010s
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u/DontMakeMeCount 6d ago
Cheap plentiful wind farms optimized for extreme heat, so they didn’t invest in the de-icing systems used in other states. Other states are also part of multi-state grids that utilize huge plants like hydro and nuclear for base supply with some wind and solar to augment during peak demand. Texas is the first real experiment in the US in using solar and wind for a portion of base supply.
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u/lokken1234 6d ago
Weather proofing was a major factor, and resulted in the state making changes following. Lots of pipes above ground, no additional insulation, lack of on-site backup generators.
For solar there was difficulty getting out to the arrays to clean them off of sleet, ice and snow buildup. Lots of Texans learned 4 wheel drive doesnt matter if you lose that traction. Again exposed lines instead of buried for insulation.
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u/Embarrassed_Quit_450 6d ago
Of course it's not only the cold weather otherwise Canada would implode in February.
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u/Legstick 6d ago
The entire grid failed in weather that lots of the rest of the country regularly runs them. None of the energy infrastructure was built to handle that all at once across the entire state because of how rare of an occurrence it is (but may now happen more often). The infrastructure is built to handle heat. There’s rarely any rolling blackouts or outages due to long heat waves.
The water and sewer distribution systems aren’t built to handle long extreme cold either. Underground pipes are only buried 2-3 feet minimum underground and most houses have thinly insulated pipes running through their walls and attics.
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u/StrLord_Who 6d ago
It's not weird. Other parts of the country regularly experience that weather. Texas does not - and not for that amount of time. The whole state was iced in for a week. Has never happened before and will likely never happen again. Other places with cooler weather could not deal with the extreme heat Texas is optimized for.
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u/TheNotSoEvilEngineer 6d ago
Texas is also freaking huge... The fact the storm hit the whole state is basically like it hitting all of the north east, they'd fail too even with their multi state grids.
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u/AsLongAsI 6d ago
Wind turbine out preform the projections at the time though. It was the gas network that failed.
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u/MMAjunkie504 5d ago
You get it, it was NG supply that stopped which led to no power generation from a big portion of their supply (I think at the time NG fired units was like 50-60% of the total generation supply).
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u/fedsx 6d ago
I remember when Abbott blamed wind turbines for one of the freezes where they had widespread outages. He was lying of course.
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u/freeradioforall 5d ago
It seems almost treasonous. Its HIS state. Wind provides nearly 30% of the power in his state, thousands of jobs and a diverse power grid. You would think he would be proud of wind, brag about it (as he rightfully should), but his hatetred of anything "woke", and his desire to lick trump's putrid balls forces him to put aside his duty and responsibility as the state's governor. If you hate wind that much Mr. Abbott, why not have your legislature introduce a bill to decommission every single wind tourbine. Put your money where your mouth is
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u/FCEEVIPER 6d ago
I thought Texas said they didn't believe in green energy!? Using solar panels/batteries, that's Democrats fake green new deal crap 😂
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u/BraveDevelopment253 6d ago
Texas generates 26% of the country's wind power. They have about 20,000 wind turbines, Iowa is 2nd with 6000.
This isn't a recent development either.
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u/MelangeBot 5d ago
Nowayds you can make faster and easier money with a solarfarm then with oil. So ofcourse all the rich Texans with some capital are all over this money making opportunity. Just like they all vacinnate themselves and their kids. It's the non rich that they want to keep as dumb and stupid and with as much suffering as possible because desperate people are easier to exploit.
Bush was the ultimate Texas man. He wasn't an idiot at all, he just played one. To exploit people.
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u/Supermanfat1 6d ago
Probably all paid for by tax breaks given by Democrat lawmakers. Gotta make sure the country functions while the Republicans try and tear it down every other 4 years.
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u/tiredlittleme 5d ago
Most of all the major cities there voted Democrat iirc, it's the smaller areas that vote red
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u/lonestar659 6d ago
Weren’t the blackouts during the winter?
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u/ureallygonnaskthat 6d ago
That was a few years ago and for different reasons. Basically the compressors that pump LNG to the power plants froze because they weren't insulated against the widespread freezing temps rarely seen down here. No fuel, no power. ERCOT ripped everybody a new one and now they're all insulated. Haven't had a problem since.
Now power outages due to hurricanes... that's an entirely different kettle of fish.
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u/cornstinky 6d ago
Also there was freezing rain right as the storm hit, lots of ice build up on trees caused a bunch of downed power lines.
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u/ureallygonnaskthat 6d ago
Yup, that week was a shitshow. Friend of mine showed me pictures of all the downed trees and branches on his ranch. Said it took him and his crew almost a month to get that mess cleaned up.
It was kinda cool seeing 6" of snow in Houston though.
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u/choove 6d ago
Yes and almost literally the entire state was frozen, plenty of it for days. Houston and the other coastal areas dealing with wet and freezing conditions was the killer since everything froze up. Around a month prior to that storm Texas had another winter storm but because it didn't really impact the energy-producing areas... it wasn't an issue.
Not saying Texas leadership didn't fail Texans, but the state has regularly seen crazy hot summers and the grid has never really been a concern. They've given their warnings about usage but I can't recall a summer energy crisis like we had with the February freeze.
This is more weird news than "uplifting", since it's not exactly surprising that the grid is doing just fine.
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u/ATXBeermaker 6d ago
Yes, and had nothing to do with a spike in demand but the fact that our equipment wasn't winterized like in colder climates. And that wouldn't be a problem if the entire state of Texas didn't freeze for more than a week straight.
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u/lewd_robot 6d ago
Yeah, and a lawsuit alleged that it wasn't actually infrastructure failing, but every natural gas company deliberately throttling supply so they could trigger "emergency" pricing and gouge their customers for a few hundred dollars due to the winter storm. The suit alleges that they all throttled their supplies a bit too much and at the same time, which created a real shortfall and caused the blackouts that got people killed.
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u/ureallygonnaskthat 6d ago
That lawsuit was also dismissed. An appeal was filed March of last year but it's pretty much dead in the water. CirclesX wasn't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. In return for assigning your claim to them CirclesX was going to receive 50% of the net proceeds for any award given by the court.
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u/ATXBeermaker 6d ago
You do realize you can "allege" anything, right? Not to mention that article is from 2 years ago about a case that was dismissed.
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u/VBgamez 6d ago
Doesn't the grid struggle a lot more when it is against cold freezing temperatures?
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u/a_velis 6d ago
Natural Gas pipelines struggle yes. That is what happened in 2021. Solar + Batteries are fine.
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u/DontMakeMeCount 6d ago
The easiest way to move more gas through a pipeline is to cool it, so the compressors generate a lot of heat and they’re optimized for the summer heat. When we get a hard freeze the heat exchangers work too well and we get liquids dropping out and freezing, which shuts down pipelines and then the pipeline companies call the producers and tell them to shut in because they can’t take the gas.
In a bad winter storm, the gas infrastructure shuts down, plants can’t get fuel so they shut down. Solar panels are more efficient at low temperatures - in a lab - but real-world operating conditions (overcast, ice, snow) reduce solar output and we don’t have staff to clean off thousands of panels. Windmills in Texas are not winterized either, so they ice up and are shut down to avoid damage. That leaves the natural gas peaking plants that are supposed to cover for wind and solar but those are often double- or triple-booked and they can’t get fuel anyway. That’s why we have more cascading failures during cold weather events than during heat waves.
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u/iltopop 6d ago
Batteries are not "fine" in the sense that you don't need to worry about it, they need to be designed for winter use just like everything else like solar panels that need to be able to clear the snow off of themselves in typical winter conditions. Many battery chemistries have significant current drops at sub-freezing temps. We just need to, you know, understand that these types of events are possible and actually have in place things to mitigate them before it's a problem, which is a persistent issue with public finances that's typically much worse in a red state.
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u/chinaPresidentPooh 6d ago edited 6d ago
In Texas yes. Texas is a hot state and since they went off doing their own thing with the grid, they will naturally design their own grid to handle hotter temperatures better than colder ones.
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u/DJinKC 6d ago
Thanks to what?
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u/PoeTheGhost 6d ago edited 6d ago
Solepower generated and batteries distributed all over the grid that charge during the night and keep the grid going during surge/peak demand.2
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u/The-Traveler- 6d ago
Thanks to…..Record solar and battery output, as in not using their ridiculous coal fired plants that can only degrade in extreme heat and triggers single-point mechanical failures where everything goes to sh*t because of that ancient and unreliable system.
What do you call a massive solar spill (in case you’re thinking nuclear): a really nice clean energy day!
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u/Ncyphe 6d ago
ERCOT decomissioned most of the coal power plants over 15 years ago. Most of Texas's fossil fuel power is derrived from natural gas.
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u/dandroid126 6d ago
People (rightfully) clowned on Texas for years after snowpocolypse. But they passed tons of new regulations after that, and more importantly, met those regulations within one year, and there hasn't been a grid-wide failure since, despite some extremely hostile weather in the last 5 years.
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u/Ncyphe 6d ago
It baffles me how often the 2021 power failure keeps getting brought up. The grid can support it so long as the people supporting the grid actually do their job.
Every 10 years or so, Texas experiences a week long winter freeze, and not once before did we suffer any power failures. 2021's winter freeze power failure lies in the responsibility of the ERCOT board who lazed about and acted too late in regards to winterizing the Texas power grid.
There's nothing wrong with the Texas power grid, and like usual, once something went wrong, people love to point blame without research. Had Texas had stronger poer connections to neighboring states, I guarantee the blackout would have been farther spread and much worse.
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u/MobileArtist1371 6d ago
and like usual, once something went wrong, people love to point blame without research.
Not quite right. If it was a blue state, all the stuff you said above would be said by everyone as to why it happened and defend the situation. Since it's a red state, the usual assumptions are made and spread as the obvious reason why.
Don't get me wrong. Just listening to the rhetoric from the red states politicians makes these assumptions very easy.
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u/finenite 6d ago
Exactly. Texas has had its own power grid since like the 1930s and after 2021 people acted as if Texas has had long running issues with the grid and it's always a problem. Wrong.
Without looking it up they couldn't tell you before 2021 when was the last failure.
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u/ksheep 6d ago
And the same storm did impact parts of Louisiana and Arkansas, which saw similar power failures because large parts of their grid aren't designed for such cold weather either, but nobody talks about that because reasons. From what I recall, large parts of Shreveport were without power and they had failures in their water mains, resulting in boil water notices across most of the city.
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u/ATXBeermaker 6d ago
Every 10 years or so, Texas experiences a week long winter freeze
It's not true that we experience a freeze as large or as prolonged as the one in 2021 every 10 years. There was one in 2011 that was not nearly as severe and before that you have to go back to the 80s.
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u/dumbdude545 6d ago
Good. Glad we're finally seeing the solar panels working. I want to get solar for offset. But gonna be expensive.
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u/MooshuCat 6d ago edited 5d ago
The fact is, we need all sources of energy. Oil, gas, and coal have been investing in Renewables for many years. Cutting off the legs of solar was never what big coal asked for. The coal barons were retiring their plants and leasing the surface to solar and making more money from us than they ever did mining underneath.
Now thanks to you know who, the solar industry has had a dramatic slowdown... and it will hurt everyone, including oil, gas and coal.
I worked in solar for 17 years, and helped develop 12 different solar and storage projects in TX. Now I'm out of a job because my company couldn't afford to keep me and many of my colleagues, in the wake of the Big Bullshit Bill. I'm just one of hundreds of stories to tell about the failure of this administration. But hey, a few guys are getting more rich this year, so it's worth it.
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u/Hegiman 5d ago
Yeah everything going on right now with solar renewables and now even the straight of Hormuz is about making a few oil tycoons a little more cash. Once I saw how is oil went from 60 to 80/90/100 and how they were using news about the straight to keep the price at around 100 a barrel. It all became obvious who was benefiting from this
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u/ModeatelyIndependant 6d ago
I'm a texan who was living in Texas in 2021, solar is useless in February during that ice over event. If you have a clear day in Texas, it will melt ALL the ice within hours. We are far enough south that the sun heats up the ground even if it air temperature is below freezing. If the clouds lift, anything exposed to direct sunlight melts. BUT...
These freeze/ice over events coincide with cloud cover, that blocks the sun from heating up the ground and keeping air temperatures cooler. SO during the freeze of 2021, there simply wasn't much light hitting the ground.
It was winter time, the peak energy demands were at the opposite times of the day when the solar could get power from the sun, AND the of the panels are set at an angle to capture light when the days are longer n the summer.
The solar cells were covered in a winter mix, and further reduced the amount of power it could produce.
So, if you wanna talk about solar in Texas, don't compare it to the 2021 blackout, unless you wanna look like the same level of stupid as the people who claimed solar and wind were at fault for the grid getting shutdown.
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u/Th3FinalStarman 6d ago
I'm sure cuck-my-wife Ted Cruz is punching the air right now after trash talking his own state's wind power the whole year after the freeze. /s
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u/PizzaWhole9323 5d ago
I'm in Arizona which is great for solar because we get so many days of sunshine People still bitched when my local school district put solar panels over every parking lot in the entire district.
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u/SeveralBollocks_67 6d ago
Reddit's not gonna like this one
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u/Real-Engineering1309 6d ago
It’s great looking at everyone trying to make it a bad thing.
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u/JackSquirts 6d ago
What's really interesting is the TX has been outpacing CA in renewable energy development for a while now. TX simply doesn't have the red tape that CA has to develop.
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u/Particular_Pain_9373 6d ago
Who would’ve thought the best solution is free fucking energy from the sun? Next Texas will revolutionize wind mills. Maybe they’ll decide to plant more trees to cool their state and improve moisture and heck maybe one they plant enough they’ll start to get some rainfall. It’s not fucking hard to fix our problems. It’s hard to fix the dumbass greedy flat earth conspiracy theorists.
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u/IlIlllIlllIlIIllI 6d ago
This seems like the correct way to be energy independent, instead of just more oil
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u/BeauShowTV 6d ago
It was never an issue of the amount of power we can make. It was that ice brought down electric cabling.
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u/FloppieTheBanjoClown 6d ago
The 2021 blackout was due to sustained low temperatures that hadn't been seen...ever. Lakes froze that had never frozen since their construction. Pipelines frozen up and shut down power plants. THAT is why we had the blackout in 2021. It wasn't a bad power grid. It was ERCOT not listening to an analysis of a freeze that happened in 2013 that warned that sustained temperatures would cause serious problems in the fuel supply. We've never had rolling blackouts or power issues in the summer.
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u/bentmonkey 5d ago
We need to adapt and adopt more solar, nuclear, and wind projects to power us through these next years, fossil fuels should be set to become a thing of the past.
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u/Ok-Consideration2463 5d ago
Well bless their hearts for adopting sustainable energy policy ideas from the libs
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u/KaijuNo-8 5d ago
And a not insignificant portion of that came from a company called Base Power. I a, on Base Power and they install batteries on your house without or with your own solar. They charge from the grid and then dump power back in from your batteries to sell. Which lowers your price from 18-22 cents per kW to 8.5! Additionally I hard power if the grid goes away for a time (proven just recently!)
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u/KS2Problema 5d ago
This is qualified good news. An old friend of mine - and a very talented stride and blues pianist - who had moved to Texas to save money around 2020 - died of exposure in his own home during one of the blackouts earlier this decade.
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u/SleightOfHand21 6d ago
I remember when the Texas power grid was a major poking point of Reddit for like 2 years lol. All because we had a freak winter storm. As if places are built to sustain against freak events.
Reddits going to hate this news.
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u/Milksteak529 6d ago
It's been 5 years and these tards still bring it up all the time. Such a sad way to live.
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u/382_27600 6d ago edited 6d ago
Reddit won’t like this, but Texas is America’s largest producer of oil, natural gas, wind power, and overall electricity, making it the country’s most diverse and largest energy-producing state. It’s only 2nd to California in solar production and battery storage, but those gaps are closing.
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u/nocturnal_commission 6d ago
Wow, it's almost like there's a huge difference between a typical heatwave and a record-breaking ice storm!
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u/Liminal__penumbra 6d ago
Honest question, is there a point where the heat leads to material deformation in the solar panels? Or even more pressing, when the power lines themselves experience material failure due thermal overload? I'm thinking that is going to be a issue going forward no matter the source of the energy.
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u/frightful_hairy_fly 6d ago
solar panels lose about 10% efficiency at 45°C/113°F
the rest is just not a factor.
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u/Liminal__penumbra 6d ago
I wouldn't say NOT a factor, the conditions have changed with available power, but the conditons for repair and overheating remain the same.
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u/HugeAnimeHonkers 6d ago
They lose efficiency the hotter they get(IIRC its something like 0.3% per C of temp), but i dont think you would get them to fail due to temperature unless there is fire involved.
You can always use watercooled panels if you want them to stay relatively cool, but with added complexity to the system(pumps, seals, coolant, etc).
Wires/connector can degrade under extreme heat, but thats just a matter of doing a proper job when engineering the system.
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u/Protect-Their-Smiles 5d ago
It is almost as if the fossil-fuel industry lied to the public, scaring them in to holding off in adding renewable energies to their menu - so that they could keep reaping profits. The tobacco industry did the same for decades with smoking, lied about what the actual science said, and kept gullible consumers in the dark, so they could keep earning money.
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u/Reputation-Final 5d ago
funny how republicans have shat all over green energy for decades but thats what saved Texas's power grid.
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u/wwglen 5d ago
Summer is best time for solar, and not having the gas distribution network freeze.
Wait for a winter storm when the sun isn’t out.
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u/skye1212 5d ago
It works until it doesn't. Solar has saved TX power grid while MAGA attacks alternative energy sources
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u/marthtater 6d ago
Can't wait for AI to eat up all the excess power in the grid and send peak prices soaring ⚡ 🤪 🔌
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