3 ms·

Is 26GW the actual surplus capacity? My understanding is the number of homes without power that were not part of intentional blackouts would have surpassed grid

Is 26GW the actual surplus capacity? My understanding is the number of homes without power that were not part of intentional blackouts would have surpassed grid capacity. This aligns with heating taking more power than summer cooling. It's normal for Texas to have a few blackouts per summer season due to demand.

mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
26GW is the thermal capacity that the market would like have had, IF there had been sufficient natural gas. [1] And that ERCOT's extreme plan (worst case scenario) had only anticipating loosing [2] 14GW of 'thermal' (i.e. mostly natural-gas) capacity. So 'lost capacity' was 2x the worst case anticipated. Estimates are that supply was about 20GW below peek demand.[3] Sources: MIT trained Princeton Professor who was tweeting real time data from ERCOT and is one of the nations leading researchers on energy systems, grids, and reliability. I highly recommend all of these threads: [1] https://twitter.com/jessejenkins/status/1361348544154664961 https://twitter.com/jessejenkins/status/1361348544154664961 [2] https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1362062037275279363 https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1362062037275279363 [3] https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1362063819858714633 https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1362063819858714633