Texas Suffers a Solar and Wind Power ‘Drought’

Triple-digit temperatures aren’t unusual during Texas summers, but power shortages coupled with urgent orders to conserve electricity are now routine. While Texans barely averted blackouts Wednesday evening, the state’s energy ordeals are a flickering warning to the rest of the country.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) called a Stage 2 emergency on Wednesday evening, one step from rolling blackouts. “High demand, lower wind generation, and the declining solar generation during sunset led to lower operating reserves on the grid and eventually contributed to lower frequency,” the grid operator’s CEO said.

Businesses that use large amounts of power were directed to curb their energy consumption—i.e., scale back operations. Utilities urged Texans to unplug electric vehicles, turn off pool filters, and prepare backup plans for medical equipment in case the power goes out. In other words, double check that backyard emergency generator.

Texans conserved enough power Wednesday to prevent blackouts, but they were asked again Thursday to use less power in the evening—when many come home from work and want to crank up the AC. Last month Ercot issued eight emergency alerts to conserve power.

Ercot says Texas set a new September record for peak demand on Wednesday, which follows 10 records this summer. Don’t blame a warming climate. The problem is that Texas’s booming population and economy have caused electricity demand to grow faster than the reliable supply—emphasis on the reliable.

The state’s refineries, manufacturing plants and data centers need huge amounts of power. Texas produces 10 times as much solar power as it did five years ago. An estimated 7.7 gigawatts of solar power capacity will be installed this year—about 9% of the state’s peak demand on Wednesday. Renewables at times can generate 40% of the state’s power.

But neither solar nor wind provides reliable power around the clock. Solar predictably wanes during the late afternoon, and the state doesn’t have anywhere close to enough large-scale batteries to make up the shortfall. So as usual Texas on Wednesday leaned on natural-gas plants to ramp up, though this still wasn’t enough.

The Legislature is asking voters in November to approve a special fund to issue low-interest loans and grants for building more backup power sources—namely, gas plants. So now Texas taxpayers are being asked to subsidize gas power to back up solar and wind that are heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.

The Texas power shortages are a harbinger of what’s to come for Americans amid the Biden Administration’s force-fed green energy transition. California has avoided rolling blackouts this summer because last winter’s storms replenished reservoirs and hydropower, though population and business flight is also working in the state’s favor on energy.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (Nerc) last month for the first time deemed “energy policy” among the biggest risks to grid reliability. “The resource mix is increasingly characterized as one that is sensitive to extreme, widespread, and long duration temperatures as well as wind and solar droughts,” Nerc said.

Unlike actual droughts, power shortages are caused by, and can be prevented by, government.