Texas summers are hot. Really hot. As in, fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk\nkind of hot. However, unless you\u2019re an especially precocious kid, most of us\ndon\u2019t observe the state\u2019s unforgiving heat in terms of yolks and egg whites.\nInstead, we experience the Texas summer as Willis Carrier, the inventor of modern\nair conditioning, intended \u2014 indoors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Oh, the cool, almost sweet-tasting air of the AC. Its\nconstant hum is music to every Texan\u2019s ears. Yet, it\u2019s easy to forget about the\nfew days each summer when the Texas electric grid works at maximum capacity.\nThese are the days when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has\nto consider calling for rolling brownouts because of the increased demand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Without electricity, a dead AC is essentially no AC. And\nno air conditioning in Texas is a mad cry for help. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the price of electricity in Texas hit its legal limit\nof $9,000 per megawatt-hour on August 12th, 2019, you would have thought that\nevery possible electricity generator would have rushed to pump out power to\nkeep the ACs humming. Instead, all the coal-fired power plants retired and went\nhome, and although wind supposedly RSVP\u2019d, the renewable power source was\nultimately a no-show.1 <\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately, with demand on that sweltering day cresting at\n74,5000 megawatts, Texas barely scraped by with just 2,300 megawatt-hours left\nin reserve.2 <\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n But besides receiving a generic-seeming text message with a request to conserve power, your average Texas electricity customer wasn\u2019t affected because they were on a fixed-rate plan. And that\u2019s a good thing for retail electricity providers<\/a> and customers alike! <\/p>\n\n\n\n But for customers who allowed the wholesale power market\nto set their prices, there was a dramatic spike in their bill (and their\nfrustration). That\u2019s what happens when an energy company directly ties the\nprice of their electricity to the market price of electricity \u2014 which, remind\nyou, peaked at $9,000 per megawatt-hour that August afternoon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We expect to see more coal plants being shut down and replaced by more environmentally friendly renewable sources of energy<\/a> generation, particularly wind and solar, to meet the growing demand from consumers on the electric grid. In fact, wind and solar might even follow ERCOT\u2019s recommendation and take a symbiotic approach when it comes to generating electricity, mainly because they generate their electricity at different times of day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally,\nwe expect solar to take center stage when it comes to meeting load demand\nduring peak summer months. So, while wind may be front and center at this\nmoment, we are confident that solar will play a much more important role in the\ntransition to a clean energy economy taking over Texas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sources<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Texas summers are hot. Really hot. As in, fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk kind of hot. However, unless you\u2019re an especially precocious kid, most of us don\u2019t observe the state\u2019s unforgiving heat in terms of yolks and egg whites. Instead, we experience the Texas summer as Willis Carrier, the inventor of modern air conditioning, intended \u2014 indoors. Oh, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy-conservation","category-renewable-energy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chariotenergy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Big Changes are Underway for Texas\u2019s Energy Portfolio<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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