Four months after devastating winter weather wreaked havoc on Texas’ power systems, the state is bracing for potential outages due to summer heat.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is asking Texans to conserve energy as much as they can until Friday, June 18 as the state is struggling to keep up with a potential record demand for electricity this month.
ERCOT cites a significant number of power plant outages combined with high demand due to hot weather for the strain on the grid. Approximately 11,000 megawatts of generation are offline for repairs. That’s enough to power 2.2 million homes on a hot summer day.
The request for a cutback on power usage comes just months after Texas’ utilities collapsed during incredibly harsh winter conditions. Millions of residents were left without power for days, and the winter storm and the resulting loss of heat is blamed for as many as 700 deaths, per a report by BuzzFeed.
The fallout from the utter failure of the state to maintain the integrity of the power supply was massive. Several members of ERCOT, which oversees the power grid, quit the council. Texas governor Greg Abbott was skewered nationally for his initial response to the winter crisis, where he went on Fox News and tried to blame the disaster on the Green New Deal, a policy which…doesn’t even exist.
The Governor recently touted on twitter new legislation he signed that he says will prevent another collapse of the Texas grid.
Of course he has spent even more time talking up his demands for Texas to build a border wall, and other events that critics say are just fabricated issues meant to appeal to far-right voters.