ERCOT Has More Questions to Answer

Did ERCOT’s actions lead to emergency conditions? And given these persistent grid problems, where do we go from here?

Things got a little tense on the Texas power grid last night. It looks like electricity could get tight again tonight and tomorrow — ERCOT has already issued another conservation call for this evening, though everyday Texans, unlike big businesses and crypto miners, won’t be paid for reducing their use.

Yesterday, ERCOT sent out its conservation call at 4:55 p.m. Then, at around 7:10 p.m., frequency — which must stay at or near 60Hz — dropped all the way below 59.8 hz in about 15 minutes. Were frequency to drop much lower and remain there, ERCOT would need to implement rolling outages to prevent the entire grid from collapsing.

It’s still unclear what caused frequency to drop this far, this fast — we’re hamstrung by ERCOT’s reluctance to share reliable, transparent information, and its insistence on blaming renewables for any issues remains a serious problem…