The Electric Reliability Council of Texas ensures a reliable electric grid and efficient electricity markets.
Wonder, based on the above on their site, where these historic loads are coming from? They didn’t just suddenly appear.
One could also wonder why those of us up north enduring temperatures well below zero are not suffering like outages.
There is base load and their is peak load, and both need to be up to the task at hand.
If not, it is blackout time, when conditions are not ideal for said blackout.
My guess is a lot of folks use electric resistance heat and also folks plugging in electric space heaters.
That’s why I asked the question about nat gas earlier in the thread.
Here in Indiana, the highest peak loads come in the summer with A/C. The plant I worked at had to trim usage on hot summer afternoons because we were one of the major consumers of electricity. There never was any issue in winter because most heat is from nat gas.
We (in Texas) cannot allow everyone in the U.S. coming for jobs AND everyone from Mexico in and then refuse to build new power plants.
We, for example, have an electric heat-pump. It's not made for really cold weather. (below 30 degrees) It's more for the high temps of summer.