Texas Electric Grid Comes Up Short—Again
May 16, 2022
A heat wave in Texas recently knocked six electric-power generators offline, raising prices along with worries about whether the grid might suffer even larger outages during upcoming summer heat, as it did during a winter freeze in 2021. In Issues, Adam Briggle recounts how living through that freeze prompted a philosophical reckoning. After listing practical ways to make grids more resilient, he wondered, for example, if people and society would gain even more by focusing not on technological change but on reducing energy consumption overall to achieve greater freedom from the grid, especially as climate change brings more extreme weather.