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Data Center Alley, a 30-square-mile stretch outside Washington D.C. and home to more than 200 data centers, consumes roughly the same electricity as Boston. So power company officials were alarmed when a big chunk of those centers – 60 of them – suddenly dropped off the grid one day last summer and switched to on-site generators. The mass reaction was triggered by a standard safety mechanism across the data center industry, intended to protect computer chips and electronic equipment from damage caused by voltage fluctuations. But it caused a huge surge in excess electricity, according to federal regulators and utility...

Last Energy’s PWR-20 is designed for mass production to scale output to user demand... Washington-based firm has decided to build 30 microreactors in Haskell County, Texas. Last Energy has obtained control of a 200-acre site to provide power to off-takers via a mix of private wire and grid transmission. The facility is expected to serve American data center customers across the state. “Texas is the energy capital of America, and we are working to be No. 1 in advanced nuclear power,” said Governor Abbott. “Last Energy’s microreactor project in Haskell County will help fulfill the state’s growing data center demand....

Texas has spent years tweaking its electric grid, but it’s still not fixed. How do we know this? ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, projects an 80% likelihood of rolling blackouts if a storm the magnitude of Winter Storm Uri hits the state this winter. Prior to Uri in February 2021, the probability of rolling blackouts was only 5%. A weaker storm—equivalent to 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott—has a 50% probability of triggering rolling blackouts. And there is no assurance that rolling blackouts can be executed, risking a widescale grid failure. So, by ERCOT’s own projections, the grid is more...

The leading bid for the first-of-its-kind facility in Gypsum that converted forest slash into electricity is from an Illinois real estate company.. The Eagle Valley Clean Energy biomass plant in Gypsum closed last month after its owners filed for bankruptcy protection. There are 7,000 tons of shredded forest slash at the facility. The leading bid for the biomass operation is a real estate company. The pioneering biomass plant in Gypsum — the first in the state to begin converting shredded beetle-kill trees into electricity — has shut down and its owner has filed for bankruptcy protection citing more than $40...

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced Thursday that it would provide up to $360 million in public funding to construct a 320-mile line connecting the ERCOT grid to power grids in the southeastern U.S. According to the DOE, the line, called the Southern Spirit, will be used to "enhance reliability and prevent outages" during potentially catastrophic weather events. ERCOT's grid, which can draw power from other grids but is otherwise contained in its own bubble, infamously failed in February 2021 during a significant freeze that gripped the entire Lone Star State. Also known as Winter Storm Uri, the freeze led...

Few states or countries were more welcoming to cryptocurrency miners than Texas. Now, lawmakers are expressing more skepticism. ... "Why is it that the cryptocurrency miners get such a sweetheart deal when we were here first?" asked energy economist Ed Hirs. "The cryptocurrency miners operate as a parasitic load," Hirs continued. "They're the tapeworms of the ERCOT grid." ... "I'm not sure how the legislature is going to deal with it," Hirs said. "Can you put the genie back in the bottle?" ... (Lee) Bratcher argues people who do not believe in Bitcoin can still appreciate the mining operations because...

NBC 5 learned more about how leaders at the state's largest power grid think it will perform during upcoming hot Texas summers. ERCOT and Public Utility Commission leaders updated lawmakers in Austin Wednesday morning after a striking new report issued by the grid operator. They've long known that ERCOT, the state's largest power grid, is most vulnerable on hot late-summer nights as the sun goes down. That's when the big chunk of energy generated by solar power goes offline. It gets worse if the wind goes down as well, and wind generators don't run. According to a report delivered to...

With seven people killed and close to a million losing power, the recent storms hit Texas hard. Restoring electricity may take days and may not be completed by Wednesday. The isolation of the Texas power grid has become a symbol of the state’s independent streak and resistance to federal oversight in recent years. The massive outages during Winter Storm Uri in 2021 were a wake-up call to the vulnerabilities of Texas’ system. But Texas hit the snooze button, resulting in repeated crises in Summer 2022 and Winter 2023. Now it seems Texas is sleepwalking into another avoidable crisis ... ERCOT...

States like California, New York, and Massachusetts have passed climate policies specifically intended to jump-start this battery industry. But this year, for the first time ever, the fastest-growing energy storage market appears to be Texas, a free-market-affirming red state that officially cares little about solving climate change. Nonetheless, the state’s low-regulation, business-friendly landscape has created ideal conditions to build batteries quickly and at scale, just like it previously incubated thriving wind and solar markets.

Earlier this week Texas grid operator ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) asked residents to reduce energy usage amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid rolling blackouts. ERCOT manages electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers and represents 90% of the state’s electric load, according to the company. Temperatures soared to 115+ degrees with the heat index in parts of Texas on Thursday amid an excessive heat warning. ERCOT issued the voluntary conservation notice due to extreme temperatures, forecasted high demand and lower reserves due to low wind generation. ... The wind turbines aren’t producing enough energy. Texas...

ERCOT’s board of directors on Tuesday named Pablo Vegas, a utility industry veteran and executive at an Indiana utility, to lead the state’s beleaguered power grid manager, still recovering from the catastrophic failures of the February 2021 winter storm. Public trust in ERCOT has remained low since the February 2021 freeze knocked out power to millions of Texans for days on end, leading to the deaths of hundreds. Ten years earlier in 2011 the exact same scenario resulted in the same number of deaths and economic losses. ERCOT will pay Vegas a $990,000 base salary, and his contract said he...

As searing Texas heat drives power demand to record highs, the state’s grid operator is ordering plants to run at a historic pace, often forcing them to put off maintenance to keep cranking out electricity. That’s helped keep the lights on, for now, but the short-term focus is putting even more stress on a system that’s already stretched near the limit. Twice in the past week, officials have called on Texans to limit electricity use during scorching afternoons as demand inched perilously close to overwhelming supply. Now, there are growing concerns over how long power plants can maintain the grueling...

An early summer heatwave pattern continues to boil parts of the Central and Southern Plains. This means parts of Texas will continue to roast with temperatures forecasted to reach triple digits next week. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s power grid operator, is already warning of record energy demand next week as customers crank up the AC. Power consultant Doug Lewin, who actively monitors the Texas grid, told FOX 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth that triple-digit temperatures are very concerning because it’s “still not even summer.” On Tuesday, ERCOT reported power grid demand jumped to 70,703 megawatts, smashing...

Texas residents are being asked to conserve power after six power plants tripped offline. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the majority of the state's power grid, wrote Friday that the incident resulted in the loss of approximately 2,900 megawatts of electricity.

AUSTIN, TEXAS – The Texas power grid is struggling with fluctuating energy prices and sporadic service, but the state’s growing bitcoin mining community believes it can help fix it. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz agrees. “A lot of the discussion around bitcoin views bitcoin as a consumer of energy,” said Cruz at an event in October. “The perspective I’m suggesting is very much the reverse, which is as a way to strengthen our energy infrastructure.” The grid is called ERCOT — short for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is the organization tasked with operating it — and it’s fussy...

The UT researchers said that 67 sites were allowed to sign up for a voluntary “emergency response” program coordinated by ERCOT. Dozens of mostly natural gas facilities, including some directly supplying fuel to power plants around the state, were paid to have their electricity cut off in an emergency like February’s devastating winter storm, according to a report released Tuesday by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. The UT researchers said that 67 sites, mostly gas refining and pipeline infrastructure locations around Texas, were allowed to sign up for a voluntary “emergency response” program coordinated by the Electric...

The City of Austin’s biomass power plant sat idle again, producing no power, during another statewide electricity shortage last week, according to the city’s electric utility Austin Energy... “Last week when ERCOT called for conservation, we started the 24 – 48 hour process to start the plant back up. Upon startup, we discovered an issue that needed repair... Austin’s biomass plant produced no power. The grid alert last week unnerved many Texans, but it registered as a relatively minor inconvenience compared to the winter storm crisis Texas experienced in February. The Nacogdoches plant was powered off during that event as...

The oldest maxim in politics is “follow the money.” That maxim also applies to electric grids. Following the billions of dollars that have been spent on the Texas grid explains why the state continues to have electricity shortages. On Monday, ERCOT, the state’s troubled grid operator, asked Texans to reduce their electricity use. That request came exactly four months after Texas residents were asked to conserve electricity due to a massive winter storm. Before going further, I’ll give you the punchline: As I explained in these pages in April, about $66 billion was spent on wind and solar in Texas...

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the regulatory agency that manages Texas’ power grid, said tight grid conditions are expected this week due to high number of forced generation outages, and urged Texans to conserve energy. The announcement came one month after it published its latest seasonal assessment projecting a less than a 1% chance of blackouts occurring this summer. It also came just four months after the state’s historic power grid failure left millions of Texans in the cold and dark. Without heat and water during sub-zero temperatures in mid-February, 111 Texans died. On Monday, ERCOT asked Texans...

The president and CEO of the Texas power grid has been fired after mounting calls for his ouster following the deadly blackouts that left millions of people without electricity and heat for days in subfreezing temperatures. Bill Magness was given a two-month termination notice Wednesday by the board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a cooperative responsible for 90 percent of the state’s electricity. On Monday, the state’s top utility regulator resigned in the wake of the one of the worst blackouts in US history. .... Grid operators disconnected more than 4 million customers as the system buckled, which...