As many have undoubtedly heard by now, many people in Texas are without electric power. Some 2 million households are struggling to stay warm without power during a major winter storm. When the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), began implementing rolling blackouts at 1:25 a.m. Monday, the outages were intended to be implemented on a rolling basis — up to 45 minutes per affected area, according to the ERCOT.
However, many areas were continually without power before ERCOT decided on rolling blackouts and continued to be without power after that decision. “Unfortunately, if you are a customer who is currently experiencing an outage, you should be prepared to be without power for at least the rest of the day,” tweeted CenterPoint Energy.
Jackie Sargent, the general manager for Austin Energy, said Monday afternoon that based on information from ERCOT, the local power outages could extend into Tuesday afternoon.
Contrary to what one might think, the energy problem wasn’t primarily due to downed power lines. Instead, in a state that has a quarter of America’s proven natural gas reserves, the power went away because Texas has turned to wind generation — and the generators froze. This coupled with a high demand for natural gas showed the folly of depending on “green” energy as a critical component of one’s energy grid.
This gives new meaning to “Houston, we have a problem.”
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