Texas’s electric grid operator ERCOT is gearing up for a winter storm that’s expected to drop temperatures to about 15 degrees across the state early next week.
Since then, Texas utilities have been on a renewable-energy building spree, adding giant batteries, windmills and solar panels that experts say will help the state better weather this winter.
“We’re going into this with a better footing,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist who studies power grids at the University of Texas at Austin. “But I don’t think we’ve fully figured it out yet.”
The coming storm is a test for how well this green energy infrastructure can hold up under the kind of tough conditions that are expected to become more common as the climate continues to change. Texas is particularly vulnerable to weather extremes because it’s not connected to any other grid that could supply power in an emergency. But power operators in other places are probably watching how these solutions work.
One big advantage Texas has: The upcoming winter storm isn’t forecast to be as wet, widespread or as long-lasting as Uri, reducing the risk of power plant components freezing across the state for days on end.
Here’s how the state has bulked up its power grid:
Texas now has back-up battery power ...
The biggest change on the Texas power grid has been the explosion of battery construction.
Over the past three years, Texas built more than 5 gigawatt-hours of battery capacity, which is enough to power roughly 3.75 million homes for one hour — about a third of the households on the Texas grid. Texas is now the state with the most battery storage after California.
The state’s new batteries could play a big role in keeping the grid online during the coming winter storm, which is expected to create an intense but short-lived burst of demand of more than 80 gigawatts on the morning of Jan. 15.
They can help utilities put a lot of stored battery power onto the grid quickly to deal with that kind of short-term spike in demand, even though the stored power may not last very long before the batteries run out. Texas’s batteries already helped the grid stay online during extremely hot weather last summer.
“Battery storage is particularly well suited to deal with those kinds of problems,” said Doug Lewin, president of the energy consultancy Stoic Energy and author of the Texas Energy and Power newsletter. Batteries also come in handy to store any solar and wind energy that is not immediately used.
The most vulnerable moment for the grid each day comes in the hour before 8 a.m., according to an ERCOT forecast for January that modeled conditions similar to winter storm Elliott in 2022. But the risk of power outages quickly falls as the sun rises higher in the sky and solar power production ramps up.
... and more solar and wind
Texas has more than tripled its solar power production since the end of 2020, shortly before Uri struck, to about 22 gigawatts of capacity today. That’s enough to power 16.5 million houses when the sun is shining.
Meanwhile, wind power has increased by about a quarter from an already high baseline at the end of 2020. Now, wind turbines in Texas can produce as much as 39 gigawatts of power.
Wind and solar provide an alternative to coal- and gas-fired power plants, which are vulnerable to freezes and fuel shortages during winter storms.
“During Uri and during Elliott we saw constraints in getting fuel to power plants,” said Rhodes. “There are benefits associated with not having to rely on the natural gas system or not having to worry about your coal piles freezing or getting too wet.”
Current forecasts predict windy conditions during the storm, which will help generate more wind power and avoid outages, Rhodes said.
The state can call on consumers to pitch in to avoid blackouts
Texas has also greatly expanded its “demand response” capacity, or the amount of energy it can call on homeowners, businesses and factories to shut off during an emergency. These shut-offs are voluntary: Home and businessowners sign up to participate in demand response programs, and in exchange, utilities can pay them to use less power in a crisis, lowering peak demand.
... but hasn’t done much to make buildings more energy-efficient
But Texas hasn’t made much progress in one key way experts say would protect residents from power outages, lower energy costs and fight climate change: making homes and businesses more energy efficient.
“We’re a leader in all things energy except efficiency,” said Rhodes.
Will Texas’s grid upgrades be enough?
Texans are still at risk of power outages. Part of the reason is that Texans’ demand for electricity is growing fast. The state’s peak energy demand — the most power Texans use at any one moment — has gone up 11.8 gigawatts since Uri — more than the state’s battery storage and demand response capacity combined (6.9 gigawatts).
Rhodes and Lewin also said they worry about bad weather shutting down the pipelines that move natural gas around the state. About half the electricity in Texas comes from natural gas — even more during a crisis, when utilities quickly burn more natural gas to keep up with demand.
“If we make the power plants so that they don’t freeze, but we don’t do anything about them being able to get fuel, do we just move some of those power plants from 'I froze’ to ‘I can’t get fuel’?” said Rhodes. “Then they’d end up not making energy anyway, just for a different reason.”