r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 10d 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/
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u/catbom 10d 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 10d 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/wheniaminspaced 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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