They are having to turn to battery power because of their failed energy policies, and not being connected to the national grid.
Heat is battering Texas’s power grid. Are giant batteries the answer?
The worst may be yet to come, with extreme weather forecast to persist into next weekend
The outsize role battery storage is playing in keeping the power on is welcome news to clean energy companies, which have been fighting the fossil fuel lobby’s efforts to place blame for the state’s electricity woes on the increasing share of renewables in its energy mix.
Battery storage is a boon to wind and solar, as it allows them to capture and store the energy created at times when it may not be needed and then make it available to ratepayers at peak hours.
But amid this heat emergency,
batteries have also proved useful in bailing out more traditional power plants.
When a large coal facility got knocked offline during peak hours this week amid the stress of the extreme heat, energy that was being stored in batteries elsewhere in Texas was quickly dispatched to carry the grid through the evening. The batteries were also crucial to keeping the power on when a nuclear plant hiccuped and went offline earlier in the week, said Doug Lewin, a Texas energy consultant.