TEXAS \u2014 In the shade, ice is staying put. A reminder of what was a winter weather weekend across Texas.<\/p>\n
Before the storm, the big question for state leadership was will our power grid hold up?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ERCOT grid has never been stronger,\u201d said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. \u201cNever been more prepared and is fully capable of handling this winter storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), launched a weather watch for the grid Saturday, which stayed in effect until Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe grid will perform well in this event,\u201d said Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Monday morning, things got tight on the grid. Around 8 a.m., ERCOT\u2019s dashboard showed energy demand got close to the state\u2019s capacity for power supply.<\/p>\n
However, before and after, reserve power kept the grid steady.<\/p>\n
Although it\u2019s still cold across much of the state, the sun has returned, bringing a bump in solar energy generation. Nearly 40% of the power on the grid is being fueled by solar.<\/p>\n
To prepare, ERCOT says it asked the U.S. Department of Energy for accommodations, such as emergency orders to authorize the state\u2019s biggest power users, like data centers, to move to back-up generation if needed.<\/p>\n
Explaining in a statement, \u201cthe DOE orders are intended to offset demand and maintain grid reliability and public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back in San Antonio, the weekend kept CPS Energy, the city’s power provider, busy during this cold snap. Thousands of customers were impacted by ice-covered tree limbs falling on power lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 In the shade, ice is staying put. A reminder of what was a winter weather weekend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[21023,2160,132,134,133,1570,102,138,223,82,57088,1569,2053,835],"class_list":["post-140229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-amber-hughes","tag-app-top-stories","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-severe-weather-2026","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}