#ercot
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ruralanarchy.bsky.social
I have lots of beef with ERCOT here in Texas, but at 1am on a Tuesday morning in 2021 when they had several generators fail, we were literally 3 minutes from cascade failure. Dealing with an impossible task, they managed to save the grid. Shit hit the fan and they saved the day.
November 20, 2025 at 11:44 PM
energysolutions.bsky.social
Google invests $40 billion in Texas data centers with increased power supply. #ERCOT #AI #EnergyEfficiency #TexasDataCenters #Investment #CloudComputing
Google invests $40 billion in Texas data centers with increased power supply.
Google is committing $40 billion to build data centers in Texas, a move that marks the state's emergence as a central hub for artificial intelligence development. The investment, accompanied by increased power supply and energy efficiency measures, aims to support innovation and workforce development, positioning Texas as a vital player in the AI revolution, while also addressing concerns about preventing future energy disruptions through strategic planning and infrastructure upgrades.
cozzyenergysolutions.com
November 17, 2025 at 2:55 AM
markhamhislop.bsky.social
Texas' 14%(!!) Grid Growth Met by Wind, Solar, Batteries

You read that right: electricity demand will be an amazing 14% higher in 2026.

Renewables + batteries will save the ERCOT grid.
#texas #powergrid #unitedstates
youtu.be/YeCC3K0-ZDY
Texas' 14%(!!) Grid Growth Met by Wind, Solar, Batteries
YouTube video by Energi Media
youtu.be
November 16, 2025 at 5:45 PM
kbarn.com
President Pritzker, thank you for meeting with me. I would like a few army divisions and eighteen months to conduct a marauding campaign to unite the ISOs and RTOs once and for all. I will march into Austin, tear down that ERCOT flag myself, and deliver it to you on a silver platter, Mr. President.
November 16, 2025 at 8:10 PM
nikowall.bsky.social
Meine konkrete Aussage bezog sich darauf:

“Solar set a new ERCOT record (last Tuesday) on Sept. 9, generating almost half of total demand in the fast-growing Texas electricity market” /3
ieefa.org/resources/su...
A summer of solar and battery storage records in Texas
Solar generated a record 29.8 gigawatts in Texas on Sept. 9
ieefa.org
November 10, 2025 at 8:15 AM
papootx.bsky.social
Meanwhile, the floor revealed the usual GOP priorities, deregulate pipelines, posture about “protecting kids,” and whine about ERCOT while breaking ERCOT.

On AI, a bunch of Republicans (and one Dem) voted like Skynet lobbyists, but the guardrails bill still passed.
November 8, 2025 at 5:11 PM
ketanjoshi.co
I recently read this described as "double-subsidised" and I like it, but @edhirs.bsky.social's phrase "the tapeworm on the ercot grid" is also good

www.wired.com/story/bitcoi...
On March 1, in a letter seen by WIRED, Laird put these complaints to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Public Utilities Commission of Texas, and other state regulators. An accompanying petition was signed by 88 local residents. Marathon declined a request for an interview, but in an open letter published in a local paper said it had “initiated an independent sound study” in response to complaints. Others argue the state’s strategy of paying bitcoin miners not to mine when the grid is under heavy load is nonsensical. “The most important thing a regulator can do is match assets and liabilities—match supply and demand,” says Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston. With the deterioration of the state’s fleet of fossil fuel plants, he says, allowing large-scale mining facilities to increase demand on the grid can only “exacerbate the situation” and invite further instability. In Texas, claims Hirs, crypto mining is primarily an energy arbitrage business, the profitability of which is dependent on the ability to purchase energy cheaply in bulk and sell it back to the grid at a premium when demand is high. These operations are effectively double-subsidized by residents, says Hirs, whose taxes provide both the funds for buying energy from the miners in periods of peak demand and the fees paid to miners for participating in demand response. Hirs likens miners to parasites, calling them “the tapeworm on the ERCOT grid.”
November 7, 2025 at 1:08 PM
stevebowen.bsky.social
This doesn't get as much attention as it should, but the state of Texas has substantially increased its share of electricity sourcing from wind and solar.

Per ERCOT: Here's a look of its current generation mix by type for today (Nov 6) and its monthly capacity.

Change is happening. We need more.
November 6, 2025 at 6:12 PM
agelston.bsky.social
I would fix it for free but now my offer for ERCOT is $100m

If they pay in advance
November 5, 2025 at 10:44 PM
ketanjoshi.co
Appendix C: This @ttp-updates.bsky.social report from 2022 feels extremely relevant in 2025.....

techtransparencyproject.cdn.prismic.io/techtranspar...

www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/cry...
Texas also pays some bitcoin miners millions for their willingness to curtail their power demand, whether they actually reduce their energy usage or not. According to one miner, they only curtail their load 3% of the time that the state pays for their participation in the program. Bitcoin miners may collect as much as $170 million a year from programs that pay large energy consumers for their willingness to shut down. Miners have proposed that Texas expand one program that pays miners to curtail their energy use, potentially raising payments to the crypto industry under that program to more than half a billion dollars a year. Crypto advocates say Texas miners will “do the right thing” and decrease their electricity consumption in times of need, even if it doesn’t align with their economic interests. In communications with investors, mining companies appear more preoccupied with their bottom line. One miner’s parent company tells shareholders it will “opportunistically sell electricity” depending on the market price. Texas’s reliance on the honor system leaves the state dependent on a range of obscure actors, some with checkered pasts. The CEO of one Texas miner has faced extortion charges and a 2017 lawsuit over more than $1.2 million in delinquent loans. Texas has allowed cleaner alternatives for grid stabilization, like battery projects, to languish at the same time that it has welcomed bitcoin miners as a panacea to the state’s energy reliability woes. Despite projections that the state would have more than 1,500 megawatts of battery capacity by the end of 2021, the Texas grid ended the year with 833 megawatts of installed capacity, barely more than half the projected level. Under certain market conditions, some Texas crypto miners already make more from energy arbitrage than from bitcoin mining, a TTP analysis shows. The structure of bitcoin virtually guarantees that mining will become less lucrative in the coming years, likely making energy trading even more at… Cruz and other cryptocurrency partisans have also argued that miners’ ability to quickly ramp energy consumption up or down means that the bitcoin industry can create new demand for renewable energy sources that generate power intermittently, allowing for green infrastructure development. In reality, miners’ voracious appetite for energy has outpaced the development of renewable energy facilities in Texas. Between 2020 and 2021, consumption of coal-powered energy increased in Texas, mirroring trends in other states where the crypto mining industry revived dying coal plants. Skeptics have pointed out that increasing the overall energy demand without generating an economically useful product is a backward step. “One good thing about crypto mining is it’s adding flexibility to the system,” a former ERCOT board member told the Washington Post last year. “But the problem is it’s consuming real resources, doing a function that has no value.” The promise of increased grid flexibility may also prove to be empty. Bitcoin miners are far more driven by profit than grid stabilization, and the vast majority of the energy they control can only be curtailed on a voluntary basis. As the TTP analysis shows, changes to the economics of bitcoin mining that are beyond the state’s control could change the calculus for miners, leaving the state in the cold at the worst possible moment. Energy storage technologies that exist for the sole purpose of providing flexibility, like batteries, do not carry the same risk. And large-scale industrial batteries can store intermittently produced energy and release it during peak times without consuming massive amounts of energy, as cryptocurrency miners do. “Miners are a strain on the grid, not a help,” one energy analyst said recently.
November 7, 2025 at 1:50 PM
ruralanarchy.bsky.social
I work in a very big factory. When ERCOT or TXU Gas reports demand might exceed supply, I get a text at 6am. I get the day off because my factory has it in their contract that they get shed first. "Due to increased electric demand, we will be having a non-production day that affects all shifts"
November 5, 2025 at 11:17 PM
sacurrent.bsky.social
As companies look to build projects that consume more power than cities, ERCOT is trying to plan transmission.
‘Rapid explosion’ of data centers causes planning struggles for Texas power grid
As companies look to build projects that consume more power than cities, ERCOT is trying to plan transmission.
www.sacurrent.com
November 2, 2025 at 9:00 PM
drrobertbullard.bsky.social
Explosion of Data Centers has ERCOT officials evaluating TX Power Grid | NewsRadio 740 KTRH ktrh-iheart-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/ktrh.ihe...
Explosion of Data Centers has ERCOT officials evaluating TX Power Grid | NewsRadio 740 KTRH
Energy experts speculate four times the amount of energy needed for AI Hubs
ktrh-iheart-com.cdn.ampproject.org
October 31, 2025 at 5:54 PM
sacurrent.bsky.social
As companies look to build projects that consume more power than cities, ERCOT is trying to plan transmission.
‘Rapid explosion’ of data centers causes planning struggles for Texas power grid
As companies look to build projects that consume more power than cities, ERCOT is trying to plan transmission.
www.sacurrent.com
October 29, 2025 at 9:00 PM
peark.es
AEP has a ton of different service areas all over the eastern half of the US and is also the largest high voltage transmission operator, with its lines carrying ~10% of total Eastern Interconnect load and a similar share in ERCOT (Texas grid).
October 29, 2025 at 1:19 PM
cleantechnica.bsky.social
ERCOT Increasingly Meets Rising Demand with Solar, Wind, & Batteries

cleantechnica.com/2025/10/24/e...
ERCOT Increasingly Meets Rising Demand with Solar, Wind, & Batteries - CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. Since 2021, electricity demand within the Texas electricity grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT...
cleantechnica.com
October 28, 2025 at 9:15 PM
douglewin.bsky.social
ERCOT demand is up 5% year-over-year & 23% since 2021 with nearly all of the demand growth being met by wind, solar & batteries, according to EIA. Solar has gone from a barely perceptible sliver to nearly 15% in only 4 years, with most of the growth in the last year. 1/2
October 27, 2025 at 6:49 PM
robertferry.bsky.social
Before you dunk on this forecast, look back at the hourly grid monitor for Texas in 2015 when solar never registered as even a fraction of a percent. Now in 2025 it's nearing 1/4 of midday summer power. If we want to live in a net-zero future we have to normalize the idea and manifest it today!
The Past & Future of the Texas Electricity Grid Years 2021– 2025 = actual data. Years 2027– 2035 extrapolate trends. Data Source for 2021, 2023, and 2025: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Hourly Grid Monitor, October 2025. ERCOT summer ave hourly generation by source. 90 GW is top line. “Other” = nuclear, hydroelectric, and biomass. Eight charts span 2021 through 2035 and show the share of coal and gas diminishing.
October 28, 2025 at 4:20 PM
robertferry.bsky.social
I want to glaze and fire these eight charts as ceramic wall tile accent pieces. They take the trends from the EIA data (2021 - 2025) and extrapolate them to a 100% clean energy grid for Texas by 2035. Seems doable.
The Past & Future of the Texas Electricity Grid Years 2021– 2025 = actual data. Years 2027– 2035 extrapolate trends. Data Source for 2021, 2023, and 2025: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Hourly Grid Monitor, October 2025. ERCOT summer ave hourly generation by source. 90 GW is top line. “Other” = nuclear, hydroelectric, and biomass. Eight charts span 2021 through 2035 and show the share of coal and gas diminishing.
October 27, 2025 at 2:06 PM
lleopard11.bsky.social
ERCOT demand is up 5% year-over-year & 23% since 2021 with nearly all of the demand growth being met by wind, solar & batteries, according to @EIAgov. Solar has gone from a barely perceptible sliver to nearly 15% in only 4 years, with most of the growth in the last year.
October 27, 2025 at 10:32 PM
cleanandprosperous.bsky.social
In WA, utility-scale BESS projects are emerging in Snohomish County, Mount Vernon & BrightNight’s Greenwater site. With 15–20 more in Puget Sound Energy’s queue. WA can follow CA & TX’s lead - scaling storage to cut costs & strengthen grid resilience.

Read the full report: rmi.org/batteries-th...
Graphic with an image of battery storage facility in the background with solar panels in the foreground covering the top half with title text inside an orange box slightly below center of the page: “The Workhorse of an Affordable Reliable Grid.” Subheading below: “Batteries are already proving they can stabilize the grid, lower costs, and replace fossil-based reliability - if we let them compete.” Bottom half of page is an off white color. RMI logo in bottom left corner, Clean & Prosperous Institute logo in bottom right corner. Graphic with off white background color and title text in an orange box: “Why Batteries Matter for Grid Stability.” Bullet points below: Battery prices have dropped 90% since 2010,” “They now support stability, adequacy, and resilience — all pillars of reliability,” “In Texas and California, batteries already provide essential grid services once dominated by fossil fuel generators.” Pie chart covering bottom right half of page with title text to the left of it: “Transmission-level reliability services provided by batteries.” Pie chart shows resource adequacy (orange), resilience (blue), and stability (green). RMI logo in bottom right corner. Graphic with off white background color and title text in an orange box: “The Payoff: Lower Costs & Higher Reliability.” Bullet points below: “Texas batteries saved $750M during January 2024 winter storms,” “California batteries cut resource adequacy costs by $23M in 2022,” “In regions like PJM, slow battery adoption = skyrocketing uplift payments (nearly $1B in Q1 2025).” Bar chart below titled “RTO first quarter (Q!) uplift payments ($/quarter)” RMI logo in bottom right corner. Graphic with off white background color and title text in an orange box: “Unlocking Battery Potential.” Bullet points below: “Value stacking: batteries earn from multiple services (stability, energy arbitrage, capacity),” “ERCOT & CAISO show how clear rules attract investment,” “FERC Order 2023 can speed interconnections and unleash growth nationwide.” Bar chart below titled “Battery revenue ($ Billions). RMI logo in bottom right corner.
October 28, 2025 at 7:20 PM
earthsciinfo.bsky.social
Batteries are letting the sun shine at night, deep in the heart of Texas! Renewables are growing fast in ERCOT, and displacing fossil fuels. 🧪🔌💡☀️💨💧⚡🔋 Source: www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...
Solar and batteries have grown so fast in ERCOT that natural gas use declined by 4%: "Since 2023, natural gas-fired generation remained relatively flat, totaling 158 TWh between January and September 2025. Although it is still the largest source of electricity for ERCOT, natural gas-fired generation averaged 43% in the first nine months of 2025, compared with 47% in the first nine months of 2023 and 2024."
October 25, 2025 at 11:41 PM
linas.org
Newspaper headlines straight out of Pravda/Izvestia: "Heroic Peoples Worker drives through snowstorm at 3AM to read serial number off of electric power pole." Why? Because ERCOT was too incompetent to track the records properly. This kind of crap is what broke the Soviets. And almost broke Texas.
October 26, 2025 at 6:34 PM
sjscentraltx.bsky.social
I remember that about 15 years ago, there was a protracted battle over where ERCOT would place transmission lines for all of the wind power generated in South Texas, to carry the power north. (2021: generated wind power couldn’t reach the people who needed it.)
October 25, 2025 at 4:20 AM
bistline.bsky.social
Load projections for ERCOT should called the "Loch Ness Monster" curve. Demand is projected to nearly triple over the next 10 years.
October 23, 2025 at 4:03 PM