"Texas is on a roll—an energy use roll, that is. This week, amid sweltering temperatures, the power demand on the state’s grid soared to an all-time high on Wednesday, reaching 80,000 megawatts of demand. This marks the eleventh time this demand record has been broken this year alone.
Texas consumers were allowed to keep their A/Cs cranking this week. But last week, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the grid, asked consumers on both Monday and Wednesday to conserve energy during another intense heat wave.
As the grid creaks and groans under the pressure, and as the widespread and deadly systemic failures during a freeze in February 2021 are fresh on everyone’s mind, renewable energy has once again become a political hot point in this contentious election year. Texas Republicans, aided and abetted by conservative media, are quick to assign blame to renewable energy for Texas’s problems whenever convenient. Last week, as ERCOT struggled for power while the wind was low, conservative outlets like the Washington Times and Fox trumpeted how the “windmill-reliant power grid” was “strain[ing].” An editorial from the Wall Street Journal last Friday declared smugly that “unreliable renewable energy [is leading] to power outages” in Texas."
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