this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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United States | News & Politics

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Nuclear power may be the solution to Texas’s electric grid woes (www.washingtonexaminer.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lntl@lemmy.ml to c/usa@lemmy.ml
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During several days of the heat wave this summer ... ERCOT was obliged to request that Texans cut back on their use of electricity during the late afternoon and early evening hours [to avoid blackouts]

The problem is that Texas has invested heavily in wind and solar power... [and] during several days in August, the wind was not blowing enough for Texas’s wind farms to operate at optimal capacity. At the same time, as the sun went down, Texas’s solar arrays gradually stopped providing power as well.

TX is in a unique place since their grid is not interconnected.

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[–] thejevans@lemmy.ml 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or maybe Texas could get its grid connected to the nearby grids so that dips like this are less of an issue.

[–] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Orrrrrr both! As well as an upgrade to all grids’ infrastructure which has been over-due for generations.

[–] asteroidnova@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Whoa boy no. We don't need those chucklefucks building a bunch nuclear anything and then not maintaining them. They let the issues with winter weather happen with warning and historical periodical events being known. They need to hook up to the national grid and have as little generation in their state as possible.

[–] thejevans@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Sure, it just seems like a weird lack of imagination to jump straight to building expensive, difficult to maintain infrastructure that takes a really long time to build, when building transmission lines and connecting to the other grids would be faster, likely cheaper, need less attention to detail, and would make for a more fault tolerant grid.