Damn You, Global Warming!

For the last decade+ policy in TX and in the US has been focused on mandating or subsidizing as much wind and solar as possible. TX has bragged about being the biggest wind generator in the US.

The TX focus on wind has come above all at the expense of coal, which has the resiliency advantage (along with nuclear) of being able to store large quantities of fuel onsite; gas mostly requires "just in time" delivery from pipelines.

“In 2009, coal-fired plants generated nearly 37 percent of the state’s electricity while wind provided about 6 percent. Since then, three Texas coal-fired plants have closed...In the same period, our energy consumption rose by 20 percent.”

Because intermittent wind and solar can always go near zero--as we saw recently in TX--they don't replace the cost of reliable power plants, they add to the cost of reliable power plants. This is why the more wind and solar grids use, the higher their electricity prices.

To lessen the price increases from "unreliables" governments try to get away with as few reliable power plants online as they can get away with. TX is no exception. The Public Utilities Commission of TX has called their grid's margin for error ("reserve margin") “very scary.”

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A Texas county is bracing for an influx of deaths from a historic winter storm and asking for a refrigerated truck to hold bodies, news outlets report.

The Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office is preparing for a significant increase in deaths from the frigid weather, which has caused power outages across the state, KPRC reported. The additional space to store bodies will be necessary as funeral homes in the three-county area served by the medical examiner’s office have lost electricity, the Houston TV station reported.

“That number is going to climb as we have the ability to do more welfare checks and check on people who’ve been trapped and without power for the last 48 to 50 hours,” Galveston County Judge Mark Henry told KPRC.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s energy grid, has struggled to maintain supply to millions of residents as historic cold grips much of the country. The council has asked power companies to implement rotating blackouts to prevent the system from failing.

Temperatures dipped to 20 degrees and snow covered the beaches of the county located south of Houston along the Gulf of Mexico.