Thread by @The_Michael_Lee

🚨🚨 The Texas electric grid can barely keep the lights on and it’s not even hot yet. We’re on the verge of a full energy crisis. Here’s why: 🧵

Over the past few years we’ve had millions of ppl move to Texas. Houston, Dallas, Austin have ranked consistently in “hottest places to move” lists.

We also have had many office HQs relocate to this state.

Massive investments in new industrial activity. Gigafactories, chip manufacturing, computer servers. Even Bitcoin mining.

But we’re an electrical island. We’re not connected to other grids. This independence allows us to do things like build CREZ (transmission lines for wind energy) quickly and without FERC bureaucracy. But it comes with a risk: we always have to supply all of our own energy.

The utilities and ERCOT are in charge of allowing new power plants to come online. They act without urgency and timelines for applications take years to approve.

But once approved, solar and battery projects can be built in a matter of months. Fossil fuel power plants however still take many years on top of that to build. They are not as quick to build.

This timeline mismatch between how quickly demand can grow and how slow it takes the bureaucracy to approve new projects, means that we have entered the summer with a massive shortfall in generation for all the new electric needs of the state.

How did we not see this? Well some of us did, which is why there are many new projects waiting to be approved. In fact there are over 2x the current installed capacity waiting to be approved.

But again Covid actually played a slight role in this: because all of these new residence and industrial demand was coming online during Covid, it was hidden because not all businesses were back open at that time. So our power needs over the past couple of years looked “normal“.

Had all the offices and restaurants and factories been fully using power during Covid, we would have seen gradually much more demand than normal, which would have signal this issue much earlier.

With that being said, all of this means we struggle to keep the lights on when it’s 90° outside.

Yes, we still have several power plants coming back online after scheduled maintenance. But that won’t be nearly enough.

And what we’ve seen this past week, is that fossil fuel plants tend to be the LEAST reliable. Early this week a coal plant caught on fire and had to come off line. Just yesterday, six gas plants broke when the grid was at its most critical, and we almost didn’t have enough power.

Here’s what we can do to save the grid this summer:

We are going to be in the world of extreme scarcity all summer. We need to use less during those hours. They may be in the afternoon hours. But sometimes they’ll be in the evening hours.

The ERCOT app shows on its homepage the supply and demand curves. Those two should never touch. But this summer, they may look like they will most days. Please be very mindful each day, when you use large electricity loads in the house.

Even if you are on a fixed rate plan, pls be mindful. Precool your house. Run the dishwasher when there’s excess supply of power plants. When you see the supply and demand curves get close, change your thermostat setting to 78°. Put on some shorts and close your blinds.

There has never been a better time to buy solar in storage. But you must have batteries in order to protect yourself from blackouts. Solar by itself will only operate if there is electrical signal on the grid. (For safety reasons)

ERCOT and the utilities should expeditiously approve any new enter connection to the grid. Whether that is a homeowner buying solar or a developer connecting a large battery to the distribution or transmission grid.

We have been working with a partner who has many batteries available today. They can finish construction in less than a month. But the utility says they need over 12 months to do the study. This is not acceptable.

That same distribution utility announced record profits last year. We are not incentivizing the utilities in the right way.

Make sure you always have a back up plan. Nonperishable food and water at the house. Maybe we don’t get any blackouts this summer. Maybe we get one every day. I don’t know and I lack confidence in our ability to bring a new supply in the current operating model.

Given this, ERCOT is actually one of the fastest places to bring new supply online. Crazy huh? In California it takes 5 to 8 years. In the northeast same thing. Our regulatory bodies are not acting with the urgency to solve climate change or to create a better energy system.

Grid operators, regulators, and incumbents are all protecting the status quo. And not acting with urgency to bring more supply online. And that held up supply is often low cost solar and storage.

This issue is most pronounced in Texas since we are on an electric island. But California and MISO-North (Wisconsin/Montana/Illinois/Missouri) has also issues power shortages for this summer. We are simply approving and building new supply too slowly.