By Wednesday, 46,000 megawatts of power were offline statewide — 28,000 from natural gas, coal and nuclear plants and 18,000 from wind and solar, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid. “Every one of our sources of power supply underperformed,” Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, tweeted. Grid operators say rolling blackouts are a last resort when power demand overwhelms supply and threatens to create a wider collapse of the whole power system. In Texas this week, grid operators and utilities knew about the dire weather forecast for at least a week. Texas, which has a grid largely disconnected from others to avoid federal regulation, may have to rethink the go-it-alone strategy.

Source: Los Angeles Times February 18, 2021 09:04 UTC