A Texas-Sized Power Problem

We already know that Texas, having broken off from the US power grid in order to be "energy independent", can't keep the lights or the heat on when the state freezes over. Hundreds of people died, thousands lost their homes and tens of thousands were stuck with five-digit power bills when the state experienced a record cold snap earlier this year.

But now, Texas's broken power grid is heading into an unprecedented Southwestern drought and triple-digit heat, and already in June the state is telling residents to conserve power as rolling brownouts and blackouts could put thousands at risk.

Texas’ main power grid struggled to keep up with the demand for electricity Monday, prompting the operator to ask Texans to conserve power until Friday.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said in a statement Monday that a significant number of unexpected power plant outages, combined with expected record use of electricity due to hot weather, has resulted in tight grid conditions. Approximately 12,000 megawatts of generation were offline Monday, or enough to power 2.4 million homes on a hot summer day.

ERCOT officials said the power plant outages were unexpected — and could not provide details as to what could be causing them.

“I don’t have any potential reasons [for the plant outages] that I can share at this time,” said Warren Lasher, ERCOT senior director of systems planning, during a Monday call with media. “It is not consistent with fleet performance that we have seen over the last few summers.”

The number of plants that were forced offline today is “very concerning” Lasher said.

“We operate the grid with the resources that we have available,” he said. “It’s the responsibility of the generators to make sure their plants are available when demand is high.”

The conservation request comes at a time of heightened anxiety around electricity after the state’s catastrophic February power outages left millions without power for days. Those outages, which were prompted by a severe winter storm, may have killed as many as 700 people, according to an analysis of mortality data by BuzzFeed News.

The root cause of the February freeze is the same as the coming summer of inferno: climate change, and an entire political party that instead of preparing for it, opened the state's infrastructure to the Wild West of deregulation, turning Texas into a third-world country when it comes to keeping the power going.  The power companies are making billions. Texans are dying. Nobody seems to give a damn in the state's halls of power, either.

It's only going to get worse in the years ahead, too. More deadly deep freezes as global climate amelioration systems break down under the stress. There'll be worse storms, tornadoes and hurricanes hitting the state, blazing hot summers with scores of 100-degree days instead of just a dozen bad days over the worst part of the season. Crippling droughts as farmers, ranchers, Native tribes and local governments fight more and more over less and less water each year.

We need a national infrastructure plan that assumes the worst-case and prepares us to deal with the fact that large sections of America are going to become unsustainable. But we're nowhere near ready for that conversation yet, and we won't be in my lifetime.