Texans are without energy thanks to a cold wave.
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A winter storm in Texas brought record low temperatures, snow and blackouts across the state. Millions of Texans are still without power, and some people question why a state that produces more energy in the U.S. is unable to keep the lights on. Disinformation about the blackout has also begun to spread online, falsely blaming wind and solar energy.
Approximately 3 million people in Texas have had to deal with disruptions since Monday, due to the freezing of power generators and natural gas pipes, hampering the state’s production capacity. This led the Texas Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT), which manages the state’s electrical grid, to manage continuous blackouts to prevent a grid failure.
Here’s what you need to know about Texas power outages.
What happened?
Last weekend, a winter storm hit Texas, bringing freezing cold to the state. As temperatures began to drop to their highest on Monday morning, generators at power plants across the state began to freeze and go offline, leading to a significant decrease in energy production. At the same time, the demand for energy increased as people increased the thermostat.
Almost 50% of the energy generated by Texas comes from natural gas, with the other half divided between coal, wind, nuclear and solar. Because of the cold, however, the gas cannot even get out of the ground through the pipes. ERCOT says 46,000 megawatts were offline on Wednesday. One megawatt is enough to supply around 200 homes a year. There are 70 to 80 plants shut down on Wednesday, 680 across the state. Thermal energy – natural gas, coal and nuclear – represented 28,000 of these megawatts, while wind and solar represented the other 16,000.
“The ability of gas generators to produce, especially in full production, was affected by the impact of the freeze on the supply of natural gas,” said Bill Magness, ERCOT president and CEO, during a live broadcast on Wednesday. “Therefore, recovering these resources is the central solution for recovering people’s power.”
The significant drop in energy generated led to continuous blackouts across the state, as ERCOT tried to maintain a balance between supply and demand to avoid a “catastrophic” blackout. This caused the interruption to last much longer than predicted by ERCOT.
Texas has its own independent power grid and is not connected to the eastern and western interconnection networks that cover the rest of the country. The state cannot have energy diverted to maintain its supply.
Some people are blaming wind and solar energy. What is the problem?
Confusion over the cause of the blackouts began to spread on social media on Tuesday, especially from state government officials.
“The reason for the blackouts is complex, but in summary: Texas has learned a lot of lessons from Cali, over-subsidized renewable energies and expelled base energy like natural gas,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican , tweeted Tuesday.
A similar sentiment came from his Texas Republican colleague Ronny Jackson, who said on Facebook on Tuesday: “Our dependence on renewable energy needs to be reviewed IMMEDIATELY.”
But on Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, also a Republican, pointed to the freezing of natural gas as part of the problem.
“The reason that energy is not available to its viewers is because the power generators froze and their equipment was unable to generate energy. In addition, the natural gas flowing into these power generators, which is also frozen,” Abbott told ABC-13 in Houston.
On Tuesday night, however, Abbott went to Sean Hannity’s Fox News program and gave a different explanation of what happened.
“Our wind and solar power has been shut down, and they are collectively 10% of our electricity grid, and that has put Texas in a situation where power was lacking across the state,” he told Hannity. “As a result, it shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas.”
According to ERCOT officials, however, most of the energy loss came from thermal energy, which is mainly made up of natural gas, not wind or solar.
“As of 9:00 am,” said ERCOT in a press release on Wednesday, “approximately 46,000 MW of generation was removed from the system during this extreme winter weather event. Of these, 28,000 MW are thermal and 18,000 MW are wind and solar. ”
When will the power return?
ERCOT does not have a specific time when it will be operating at full power, but it is working to restore power. However, there is more than just turning on a button.
“Now, the challenge was to restore service and then, if the network becomes unstable again because of the problems with the weather and maintaining the supply and demand imbalance, we had to pull them back, unfortunately,” said Magness at Wednesday. .
As more electricity returns to homes, there may be continuous blackouts for days until the expected hottest weather arrives this weekend.