At-a-Glance:
As work continued to restore electric power across the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region, data firm Lium released a series of graphs that offer early insight into the state’s grid performance in the days before the blackouts and immediately after. To learn more, read “3 graphs that shed light on the ERCOT power crisis.”
Key Takeaways:
- Wind generation progressively slowed and ended up down around 8 GW compared with the prior week.
- Natural gas generation was suffering shortfalls as well, with a “big crash” in early hours of Monday February 15.
- Lium concluded that the ERCOT shortfall could have been met had natural gas, coal, and nuclear all been operating at peak summer levels (+9 GW) and if wind were operating at its typical February rate (+ 8 GW).
Path to 100% Perspective:
The recent Texas blackouts demonstrate the importance of having reliable sources of power in the event of extreme weather and natural disasters. Liquid fuels can be stored in large quantities at power plant sites for occasions when gas pressure is too low. In the future, these back-up fuels can be carbon-neutral methanol or ammonia, offering long-term, carbon-free, on-site energy storage. Excess electricity from periods of oversupply of solar and wind energy can be used to produce such renewable fuels locally in Texas.
Photo by Charles Fair on Unsplash