Thread by @douglewinenergy

Another week, more record-setting electric demand on the #ERCOT grid:

All-time record (Tuesday): 78.4GW
Projections for today: 79.5
Tomorrow: 80.8
Wednesday: 81.7 (higher than ERCOT's most extreme scenario)

#txlege #txenergy #energytwitter 1/thread

It’s possible we’ll get more conservation alerts. If so, hopefully, @ERCOT_ISO and @PUCTX will get information out faster and be clearer about what resources are available. The public deserves more and better information.
#txlege #txenergy 2/

Last week, on Sunday, PUCT and ERCOT said there were 12GW of "dispatchable” offline. It's not clear what that represents or why it's offline. On Wednesday, that number was up to 13GW. Note they lump all dispatchable into one category while separating out wind and solar. 3/

We have a very good idea of how wind & solar will perform this week (projections are high btw) but no idea how much gas & coal will be online. There’s no spreadsheet, no dashboard looking a week ahead (or even one day ahead) for thermal like there is for wind & solar. 4/

Tuesday, at peak, we’ll likely have >20GW of wind & solar. Wednesday ~18GW. How much gas & coal will be offline? We don’t know. Thermal generator rep says “things are going to break," but things are already breaking. Things, in fact, have already broken. dallasnews.com/news/2022/07/1…

Last week, from Sunday night, when ERCOT falsely blamed wind for electricity shortfalls, to Wednesday, when they called for more conservation, an additional 2.5GW of gas & coal plants went offline. What happened? Which ones? No one at the PUCT or ERCOT is talking.
#txlege 6/

ERCOT presented to the PUCT at its regular meeting on Thursday—there was no mention of which plants were offline, and no one asked. Think about that: no questions asked about supposedly reliable dispatchable energy resources that apparently can't be dispatched.
#txenergy 7/

Last night, ERCOT data showed thermal outages were 100% higher than one week ago & 100% higher than what Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy (SARA) projections. ERCOT & PUCT must be clearer about problems w/ gas & coal—and how state policies are causing things to break. 8/

They should start by defining “dispatchable” and breaking it out into categories. How did coal perform relative to gas? Where were most of the outages? Is nuclear dispatchable? Nuclear had a great week, but no grid operator thinks of nuclear as dispatchable. It’s on or off. 9/

Unfortunately, PUCT and ERCOT would rather blame wind and solar—even though they are very predictable resources, consistent with planning expectations and past performance, and examples of Texas energy leadership of which Texans are proud (we're #1 in wind and #2 in solar). 10/

If wind will be lower than average one day, then dispatchable resources should be ready. If wind is higher than average, use those windows to let aging, breaking-down thermal plants have some much-needed maintenance.
#energytwitter #txlege 11/

It’s a system. Renewables provide cheap, clean, predictable power—vital as Texans try to pay extremely high energy bills. Gas and coal have none of those attributes. They are expensive and polluting resources with little predictability.
#energytwitter #txenergy 12/

Attacking renewables, without addressing the root cause problems (high demand from lack of investment in #energyefficiency, gas & coal outages, climate change fueled heat waves, etc.) will only worsen the reliability and affordability crises faced by Texans.
#txlege 13/end