Last month I did a piece on the fragility of the Texas electrical grid being possibly being tested by 13 minutes of solar eclipse.

THIRTEEN MINUTES OF KINDA DARK

Yeah.

…ERCOT has 22GW of solar generation capacity installed, which on the average beautiful bright day produces 13GW (oh, that’s efficient). So far, they’re “forecasting” that it’ll be dark enough to reduce the cells to only 13% of “clear sky” capability (estimates the terrestrial solar radiation under a cloudless sky as a function of the solar elevation angle, site altitude, aerosol concentration, water vapor, and various atmospheric conditions)

My girlfriend Julie in Houston sent me an article yesterday to follow up. It turns out they weren’t just rattling the cages for effect. ERCOT itself has officially announced “This is a problem.” They’re trying to make it sound sexier by using the astronomical event’s cool name, but it’s no cover for just plain old incompetence and piss-poor planning.

AKA business as usual.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is bracing itself for yet another challenge to the state’s power grid this year: The upcoming Oct. 14 annular solar eclipse. Texas is a prime viewing spot for next month’s “ring of fire,“ its path of totality tracing over the cities of Odessa, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi. Unfortunately, ERCOT officials recently confirmed that the rare celestial event could have measurable impacts on solar resource power production following a summer of record-breaking demand.

The annular solar eclipse on October 14th, 2023 will impact North America, Central America and South America. Atmospheric G2 takes a closer look at the solar eclipse event and its impact on the ERCOT power grid in our latest blog: https://t.co/qyEuqntWzx pic.twitter.com/JaG0FUlMyJ

— Atmospheric G2 (@Atmospheric_G2) October 2, 2023

RING OF FIRE

Sorry guys – not gonna get you out of this (That name is already taken by a totally boss circle of volcanoes in the Pacific. Volcanoes beat an eclipse all to pieces.).

Hell, my electricity has gone out 4 times in September, when there wasn't an eclipse or solar flares, or an apocalypse. It was even a bit cooler than it had been.

— Katherine Turner-Pearson (@ktp4texas56) September 28, 2023

It was a tough summer for ERCOT. They were knee-deep in “relying on renewables” a couple times, and it darn near turned disastrous as it was.

…The Texas power grid had a tough summer keeping up with record heat in the state with the all-time record for peak demand reached. Texans were asked to conserve energy multiple times this summer to curb high demand that could lead to rolling blackouts. No such conservation measures have been announced by ERCOT.

This was the first summer that Texas needed to rely on renewable energy sources to meet peak demand. An increasing amount of solar energy has been relied on in the middle of the day.

Don’t they think they might want to rejigger this whole thing? They are taking a beating in public opinion polls with this news.

.⁦@ERCOT_ISO⁩ in the dark about how to keep Texas grid working during solar eclipse https://t.co/NuWDA5XmoL

— Stacey Berg (@slbscifi) September 27, 2023

And I honestly don’t understand the logic behind this “transition” BS to begin with. You can’t “rely” on something that is inherently “UNreliable”…can you?

Or why would you to begin with?

“Fickle” is never a word you want associated with something your state needs to be reliable, come hell, high water, or lack of sun for 13 minutes in the middle of the day.

As the first of two major eclipse events approaches, local communities are bracing themselves for a sudden influx of tourists which could bring with it a large number of safety hazards, including limited first-responder mobility, wildfires, and extra strain on the seemingly fragile and fickle Texas power grid.

Jeff Fincke, emergency management coordinator in Kendall County, told MySA those who are looking to open up their land to campers or eclipse watchers for the October 14 happening should be wary of tall grasses and anyone “just doing something stupid.”

Fincke and other emergency responders in the area have been planning for the sudden tourism boom for more than a year, looking to a 2017 eclipse event which brought more than a million eclipse chasers to Northeastern portions of the United States. That eclipse happened in the height of wildfire season, according to Forbes, leaving a greater risk of flames igniting as residents opened up their land to watchers.

Fincke and other public officials have expressed concern over uncut grass which could be ignited by the hot undercarriage of vehicles looking for a place to park.

…According to a presentation made at an ERCOT board meeting August 23, solar energy supplies could dip down to 13% of their normal capacity at the peak eclipse, which is estimated to occur around 11:50 a.m. However, no conservation calls have been issued by the state agency just yet.

Looks like this outage, should it happen, will be touristas’ fault, vice an inherently unstable grid and miserable management.

As far as warnings, I’m just stabbing in the dark here, but maybe because it’s not dark yet is why there aren’t any issued.

Who are the goobers running this operation?

Do they know winter’s coming?

They should check X for that – lots of people are busy reminding them.