Fun fact: Natural gas, nuclear, and coal plants too often fail when weather conditions are extreme hot or cold.
Texas has been experiencing a heat event this week, and a larger than assumed outage of thermal power plants. Fortunately, renewables, especially solar and batteries, have filled the gap.
Wow. 12 GWs of natural gas plants have unplanned outages in Texas right now, more than twice the amount the grid is supposed to be able to handle. Batteries keeping the lights on as we speak.
ERCOT, in its own words, “assumes a total planned and unplanned thermal outage amount of 5,195 MW” in August. It’s >12,000 right now.
Just checked current outages for today. 17 GW. Grid holding up well, with 36+ GW of renewable generation right now, batteries in charging mode.
Trump Admin is changing past National Climate Assessments:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/07/climate/wright-national-climate-assessments-updating
“When you get into departments and look at stuff that’s there and you find stuff that’s objectionable, you want to fix it,” he (Chris Wright) said.
I’d like to put in a good word for wind power here in Texas, providing upwards of 15GW overnight when it’s still hot. (Summer nights aren’t always that hot here in central Texas: One night last week temps plummeted to a brisk 73°F!)