Texas Public Policy Foundation Vice President Chuck Devore says there were two problems that led to the blackouts this week.
He says ERCOT failed to plan for the spike in demand.The other is that lawmakers have disincentivized reliable thermal power (coal & gas) in favors of renewable power.
“We lost the thermal power because operators couldn’t see a return on investment due to be undercut by wind and solar, which is cheap for two reasons—it’s subsidized and it doesn’t have to pay for the costs of grid reliability by purchasing battery farms or contracting with gas peaker plants to produce power when needed, not when they can.
Meanwhile, Texas has seen a growth of 20,000 megawatts of wind and solar over the same period to a total of 34,000 megawatts of installed capacity statewide, though they rarely perform anywhere close to capacity.
Wind and solar, with state and federal subsidies, have pushed reliable thermal operators out of business or prevented new generation from being built as operators can’t make money off of the market.”
Speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox last night, Devore says:
“...wind and solar producers in Texas and across the country are not responsible to produce power when it’s needed...and the more wind and solar that you have on the grid, unless it’s backed up with natural gas plants that sit around waiting to be used or these huge battery farms, what’s going to happen is California style blackouts are going to be come increasingly common.”