Texas Power Grid Strains In Record Hot Weather, Just As It Did In Record Cold Weather

Texas residents are getting fed up with both the long lasting
heat wave they are experiencing and ERCOT, which
does a poor job managing the state's electrical grid.
ERCOT keeps telling residents to conserve electricity
due to inadequacies in the Texas grid.

 You want your electric power supply to be reliable. Especially when temperatures in the winter are below zero, so you don't freeze to death in your own home.  

You also want electric power to be reliable, when it's 110 degrees out and you don't want to die of heat stroke in your own home.

Texas can have both kinds of weather, and their power grid is not up to the challenge of either weather extremes. 

The hilariously and inaccurately named Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT begged customers to conserve power as much as possible on Monday after several days of intense heat. Intense even by Texas standards.  

For the state of Texas as a whole, Sunday was the second hottest day since at least 1950. Individual cities melted in the heat. Houston reached 105 degrees, tying the record for the hottest day in that giant city's history. That huge city also set a record for their hottest four-day stretch on record.

Somerville, Texas got up to 113 degrees Sunday. College Station was close behind at 111 degrees, its second hottest temperature on record. Austin reached 110 degrees over the weekend, tying the record for the hottest on record for the entire month of July.

The heat is expected to go on for quite awhile yet, too. Each of the next seven days in Dallas are expected to reach at least 100 degrees, except possibly on Friday, when the forecast high is a comparatively frigid 99 degrees.

Anytime you get record, long lasting heat like Texas is experiencing, you're going to run into power supply shortages. If we manage to have a near record heat wave here in Vermont later this summer, I'm sure you'll hear pleas to reduce your electricity usage during the day. (Spoiler: No big heat waves are currently in the Vermont forecast).

So you'd expect ERROR, I mean ERCOT to ask for conservation. But Texas is a special case, and I do mean that in a derogatory way, at least in terms of its energy management.

They long ago decided to create their own independent power grid, with no real links to power supplies in other areas. Here in Vermont, we're more typical of other regions of the United States. We'll get feeds of electricity from other states and/or Quebec if demand begins to outstrip supply in the Green Mountain State. 

With no way to get help from surrounding regions, Texas can only do so much in these situations. 

Traditional electric generating plants, run by gas or coal or other fossil fuels are falling short. Some are in disrepair. There's eco-friendly power sources. Solar power is doing great with the wall to wall sunshine of the Texas heat wave, but supplies are limited. Wind power is big in Texas, but under this het wave, wind is practically non-existent, so the whirlygigs aren't helping all that much. 

ERCOT warned over the weekend that if energy conservation was insufficient Monday, there would be rolling blackouts. As of late Monday afternoon, it appeared as if enough people were turning up the temperature on their air conditioning settings to barely avoid these blackouts.  Plus, a few well timed and well placed thunderstorms developed Monday afternoon over some populated areas, cooling things down a bit and reducing demand. 

Temperatures cooled ever so slightly in Texas on Wednesday, so the electricity is still flowing. They're not out of the woods yet, of course.  Through the end of the month, long range forecasts focus on Texas as being the most likely area of the United States to experience much hotter than normal temperatures. 

Even if nobody in Texas ends up with a blackout because of the heat, they're going to pay for this heat wave.  In May, before the heat really hit in earnest, average power bills in Texas had already increased by 30 percent or so in a few previous weeks. 

While virtually all the continental U.S. is expected to be
hotter than  normal through the end of the month, Texas
is the most likely place to experience much hotter
than normal conditions. 

If the current story of a weather related Texas energy emergency rings a bell, it's because you're thinking of February, 2021. It's believed 246 Texans died, and billions of dollars in damage hit Texas when the state's power grid collapsed in a record cold wave. Most of those who died succumbed to the cold or carbon monoxide poisoning from using alternative and unsafe ways to stay warm.

As always, this has gotten political. Democrat Beto O'Rourke is running against incumbent Republican Gregg Abbott. O'Rourke made sure to tweet the following:

"We can't rely on the grid when it's hot. We can't rely on the grid when it's cold. We can't rely on Greg Abbott. It's time to vote him out and fix the grid."

By the way, I wouldn't get too smug about your friendly local power grid being better than the one in Texas. Yours probably is better than that of the Lone Star State, but not immune from increasingly weird weather brought on by climate change.

Other than storms, heat waves are probably the biggest culprit than get cut your power. Cold waves can of course do it to you, too. But weather extremes are getting more, well extreme under the pressures of climate change. Just another thing we'll need to be prepared for.

It is expected to get hot up here in Vermont next week. It likely won't be record heat, and the power grid should hold up just fine. That's not to say things will work out with our power supply if the heat were more intense and long lasting. 

Even in a place with better energy management like Vermont, electricity will be one of the many important things affected by climate change. 

 

Texas Death Toll Rises From Last Winter's Freeze. Will State Repeat This Year?

It's been nearly a year since an intense cold wave struck the South and Midwest and Texas has just updated the number of people killed in that freeze.  

A frozen neighborhood in Texas last February. 
Photo from the Texas Tribune

The Texas power grid, due in large part to mismanagement, failed during the winter storms and subzero temperatures. The new death toll from that disaster is 246, according to the Texas Tribune. State officials recently added 36 deaths to the toll to arrive at that number. 

The ages of those who died ranged from a little under one year old to 102.  Nearly two thirds of those who passed died of hypothermia.  Millions of Texans spent days in frigid, dark, heatless homes during the cold wave and power outages.

It should be noted that Texas might still be seriously underestimating the number of deaths. Other sources have placed the death toll at between 700 and 800.

But no matter how you look at it - 250 dead or 750 - this was still an enormous disaster and tragedy. One that could have at least partially been avoided.  

Estimates of the damage from burst pipes and other issues from the cold and subsequent power failures, along with lost business, vary widely. But most estimates exceed $150 billion, which is more damage than in the catastrophic floods Texas suffered with Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Texas has not winterized power plants, despite decade-old warnings that such a disaster could happen.  Also, unlike in the rest of the country, Texas has a locally pro-business go it alone strategy, so that the state's power grid is independent from surrounding grids.

Elsewhere in the United States, when a particular state or region suffers a severe storm that threatens the entire power grid, these regions can "borrow" electricity from neighboring grids that are not experiencing extreme weather 

There still will be a lot of power outages in a severe storm, but this sharing means not quite as many people lose power and not for as long a period of time. 

Because of the way state finances are set up, power costs soar astronomically as cold snaps arrive. It was so extreme last February that even people who had power shut off the lights and heat so as not to go bankrupt. 

This was extreme, In one Texas household NPR looked at, the January electric bill was $257.  The February bill was around $10,000.  No, I did not accidentally type any extra zeroes.

Some of the charges were subsequently sharply negotiated downward, despite resistance from some utilities.

Warnings continue that Texas will suffer the same fate as last year if another big cold snap arrives.

After a week of record high temperatures, winter finally did arrive in Texas over the New Year's holiday.  There were no real power consequences, as that cold snap was brief and not nearly as intense as the one last February. Since New Years Day, Texas has had bouts with relatively cold winter weather, but certainly nothing in the extreme category.  

Back to back winters with the intense cold experienced in February 2021 are unlikely in Texas, but weather extremes have gotten more common with climate change, so nothing is off the table.