How solar and wind energy are saving Texans from a record heatwave [View all]

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IN DEPTH

How solar and wind energy are saving Texans from a record heatwave

The same sun that is scorching Texas is keeping the air conditioning running, no matter what certain Lone Star legislators say

JULY 4, 2023

Texas has been breaking all sorts of records, and that's mostly bad news.

As a heat dome settled over Texas in June, trapping brutal heat and humidity underneath, high temperature records were broken across the state. It was so hot in Texas, meteorologist Ben Noll noted, that the only rivals on planet Earth were "the Sahara Desert and Persian Gulf area." The National Weather Service in Houston apologized for the "potentially deadly" and "oppressive and persistent heat" smothering the state: "Sorry, y'all. We're gonna get back to our typical levels of heat someday, but not real soon. Keep up the fight against the heat!"

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Texans, obviously, cranked up the air conditioning. And that was largely responsible for a new all-time record for energy demand in the state — 80,878 megawatts on June 27 — though the state's grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), didn't expect that record to hold long.

The Texas power grid — which, uniquely, only serves Texas — has shuddered and occasionally broken in recent years under the weight of extreme weather, a growing population and aging infrastructure. But so far, the grid has held up this summer. In fact, ERCOT has only asked customers to voluntarily reduce electricity use once during the heat wave.

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And that's due in large part to another record Texas has shattered this summer: Solar and wind farms set a new high water mark for renewable energy generation — 31,468 megawatts — on June 28, helping offset the 8,000 megawatts knocked offline at ailing natural gas and coal-fired plants. "Wind and solar are giving us a big enough buffer that even when we have a handful of power plants go offline, it isn't causing disruptions," Dan Cohan at Rice University in Houston told The Washington Post.

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