As I sipped coffee and poked through the news early Monday morning, I saw the warning from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT): prepare for rolling blackouts. It wasn’t unexpected. Temperatures have been breaking records left and right across Texas, with Austin’s Camp Mabry sizzling in at 110 °F the day before, beating a record set in 1917 by 5 °F, and San Antonio searing in at 106 °F, beating a previous record by 3 °F set in 2020.
Similar temperatures are expected today, but as a working weekday, electricity consumption is generally higher, so—with everything else being the same—there’s more demand on the grid. Not only that, ERCOT projects that Texas (as of this moment) will break an all-time record for energy use, a record we have broken over and over this year.
Read more from Dr. Robert Mace with The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment on the Hotter than a Jalapeño blog here.