Texas Pushes Power Grid to Brink: Record Heat, Record Demand

Folks, Texas is hotter than a stolen tamale right now, and Texans are cranking up that sweet, sweet AC. But uh-oh, looks like the power grid is feeling the heat too. Here’s the scoop.

People are also reading: Does cracking your garage door keep your home cooler? How to stay cool amid Texas heat

ERCOT Flips Lid with Record Power Demand

The Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) told the Dallas Morning News that the state's power grid hit an all-time high on Tuesday. With searing temps and warnings, demand peaked at a whopping 85,559 megawatts—whoa! That’s just shy of what the whole population of some small countries uses. Last August’s record got a beatdown too, with 85,508 megawatts being left in the dust.

Texas growth and boomtown data centers are part of the problem, not to mention those crypto miners chugging along. Remember, Texas does things big—even power grids escaping federal regulations. Most of Texas kept the lights on Wednesday, but Harris County logged around 8,500 outages. Bummer.

Back in June, ERCOT predicted power grid shenanigans for August. Yep, they called it. Chances of emergency alerts shot up Tuesday night, and controlled outages followed at 9 PM. ERCOT’s June report dropped the bad news: "Reserve shortage risks are the highest during the evening hours...when daily loads are typically near their highest levels and solar production is ramping down."

Walt Baum, the big cheese at Powering Texans, chimed in, "It’s important to note that ERCOT’s recent monthly outlook for August is intended to help prepare for all possible scenarios, including a worst-case scenario that would see demand peak for a limited amount of time." Baum and his crew aim to add 5,000 megawatts to the Texas grid. Good luck with that.

Houston's Battery Breakthrough: Power on Standby

A heads-up for Harris County—some outages right now, but energy company Jupiter Power aims to fix that. On the same day Texas broke the record, Jupiter announced a new 400-megawatt-hour battery storage system, Callisto I. This gizmo will pump out reliable, zero-emission power in central Houston. The former fossil fuel plant near the Medical Center and Houston Ship Channel is getting a green makeover, capable of supporting an extra 400MW/800MWh of battery storage. Keep your AC humming, folks.