The Electric Reliability Council of Texas says a large number of power plants are offline, but it could not provide details as to what may be causing the “very concerning” number of outages. At the same time, the state is experiencing near-record demand for electricity in June.
Big surprise, amirite?
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“[Electricity demand] is really driven by temperatures, and right now it is 99 degrees in Dallas, 97 degrees in Austin and 97 degrees in Houston,” said Joshua Rhodes, research associate at the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin. He said at those high temperatures, people tend to crank up their air conditioning, which strains the grid. At the same time, he said, power plants have already had a rough year given the damage during the February outages, which may be causing new complications.…
During the recent legislative session, Texas lawmakers passed energy grid legislation that aimed to prevent electricity blackouts in response to the February crisis. Senate Bills 2 and 3 included a few key changes to the state’s power grid that experts said will begin to address some issues, such as requiring power companies to upgrade plants to withstand more extreme weather and creating a statewide emergency alert system. However, it will likely take years before those changes are fully implemented.
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The state likely won’t require companies to make weatherization upgrades until 2022 at the earliest.