There has been a lot of confusion over the drivers of the Texas blackouts. While more will become clear in the coming days, neither renewables nor insufficient gas capacity were the culprits. Rather, it was the lack of resiliency of to extreme cold conditions.

A thread: 1/9

Texas has seen an explosion of cheap wind power in recent years. Wind now produces around 20% of Texas' electricity. However, at the same time Texas has also been building a lot of gas capacity; gas generally works well with wind, able to quickly ramp up to fill in gaps. 2/

Because it is intermittent, the grid manager @ERCOT_ISO does not rely much on wind to meet extreme demand events such as the one we are experiencing right now. Rather, they have enough gas (and nuclear/coal) capacity on standby just in case high demand coincides with low wind. 3/

As such, adding more wind to the grid would not have that big an effect on the amount of gas capacity needed for peak demand events. The narrative that the current blackouts are due to over-investment in wind and underinvestment in gas miss this important dynamic. 4/

Texas has plenty of gas capacity to meet current demand. The problem is that around 40% of it went offline, due to a combination of frozen equipment and insufficient gas supply. Supply was low due to lower production (frozen wells) and extreme home heating demand. 5/

@bradplumer hits topic on point with best summation to date of range of policy solutions to harden US electric grids 1/

2/ Wind turbines can be equipped to operate in icy conditions

3/ Thermal natural gas plants can be built to store oil on-site to fuel switch during emergencies

Capacity market with adequacy payments encourage storage Eg Grid regulators “design markets that pay extra to keep a larger fleet of backup power plants in reserve in case of emergencies”

Integrate EVs into residential solar systems with inverters that can automatically island away from grid (inverters need extreme weather related equipment)

So many of the misleading narratives about the #TexasBlackout are missing a fundamental understanding of our electric power supply, and its mutual vulnerabilities with our gas systems. We're facing an _energy systems_ crisis, not just an electricity crisis.

To understand why, we can begin by seeing how ERCOT generates power on average. Nearly half is from gas. Wind topped coal last year for the first time. We have just 4 nuclear units, little hydro, and solar soaring from a small base.

That supply provides power for most but not all of the state. And the grid is contained within Texas, with very little transmission linking to the rest of the country or Mexico. So what happens in Texas, stays in Texas.

You'll also notice that the grid can operate just fine with very high levels of wind -- over 50% at times -- at that our peaks typically come in summer. We also have a minuscule but growing amount of battery storage (0.2 GW vs. 74 GW peak demand).

Before each season, ERCOT issues a Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy. It's meant to plan for the peak demand expected that season.