Texas

15Sep

Walking the Reliability Tightrope

Just last week, the Texas grid narrowly avoided blackouts as the state’s grid operator, ERCOT, instituted emergency operating conditions. It was the latest sign that as power demand soars, operators are walking a tightrope to manage grids ever-more dependent on variable sources of power, policy-constrained supplies of thermal generation and inadequate infrastructure. As E&E News […]
23Aug

We’re Still Not Talking Enough About Power Demand

Electricity demand records are falling daily. In Texas, the state’s grid operator has reported 10 new all-time highs in demand this summer with another new peak expected this week. In the Southwest Power Pool, which runs the grid in parts of 15 states, power demand hit an all-time high on Monday. And the operator that […]
18Jan

The U.S. Grid is Running on Empty

As we’re coming to learn, the bitter cold that forced rolling outages in parts of the Carolinas and Tennessee over Christmas also pushed neighboring grids right to the very edge. While the lights didn’t go out on the PJM, MISO and ERCOT grids, grid operators were at times left scrambling. And now, after-action reports are […]
27Jul

Surging Natural Gas Prices Underscore the Need for Fuel Diversity

Consumers are finally getting some relief at the gas pump but the prices for natural gas and electricity are now soaring. As the economy treads water, fighting off recession, a new variant of energy-driven inflation is knocking at the door. With the U.S. now the world’s largest LNG exporter, and the U.S. gas market increasingly […]
22Jun

Voters Want Action on Grid Reliability

Americans are deeply concerned about the reliability of the nation’s power grid and the affordability of their electricity supply. They’re so concerned, even frustrated, with warnings over the potential for rolling blackouts – or worse – they now want government action to fix the problem. According to national polling from Morning Consult, nearly 8 in […]
15Jun

The Nation Braces for Blackouts

Warnings of blackouts this summer are quickly becoming a dangerous reality for much of the country In the Midwest, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which manages the region’s grid, issued a warning of tight capacity conditions on June 13 as the grid struggles to keep up with soaring demand from a heatwave. Utilities were […]
11May

The Transition to Crisis

The grid reliability crisis continues to deepen and spread. Warnings about capacity shortfalls and blackouts are so frequent and ubiquitous they are as regular as a utility bill. Just this week, The Wall Street Journal found that, “from California to Texas to Indiana, electric-grid operators are warning that power-generating capacity is struggling to keep up with […]
04May

The End of Flat Power Demand: Electrification, Big Data and Crypto

A new energy era is here. The shale gas glut and years of flat power demand have come to an abrupt end. Those two constants of the past decade have been replaced by soaring gas prices and the return of rising power demand driven by the data revolution and electrification. Natural gas prices are four […]
30Mar

Burying the Lede, and Responsible Energy Policy

A new study designed to show that a future in Texas without coal is within reach in fact shows just the opposite. Like other studies and models before it, renewable boosters have an interesting propensity to bury the lede. In this case, a study about Texas’ vast wind and solar potential in fact highlights one […]
23Feb

The Reliability Crisis Reaches a New Gear

A new consensus is building that electricity grid reliability problems are in fact very real and very serious. That may not be news to anyone who has been paying attention. There have been countless warnings that something is very wrong but, for years, many of the warnings and some of the loudest voices making them […]