And of course, extreme weather of all kinds endangers the state’s electric grid, which is already stretched to its breaking point. At least one of the six power plants that shut down on Friday had
postponed scheduled repairs after ERCOT asked facilities to stay online to deal with the heat wave. Disastrous power outages during Winter Storm Uri last year turned a spotlight on the grid’s flagging capacity. While ERCOT claims to have added more generating power since last year, experts say that’s still not enough.
“They’re not accounting for climate change in these estimates,” said
Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University who in addition to studying the science of climate change has researched the state’s power grid. To predict demand, officials rely on data from the past 15 years. But given that the climate is changing, “that’s not a good way to predict what the future is going to be like,” he explained.
Dessler urged the grid operator to change its policies and procedures.
“Climate change to ERCOT is like Voldemort in
Harry Potter; you can’t name it. They have to be able to say the words ‘climate change,’ they have to understand that climate change is going to be a factor. And they have to include that in their forecasts,” he said.