Climate Changed
Texas Declares Second Power Emergency in Three Days
- Heat propelled electricity demand just as plants went offline
- Power prices surged by more than 41,000%, hitting a price cap
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An energy emergency that Texas’s grid operator was forced to declare on Thursday as an unrelenting heat wave threatened power shortages has ended.
While temperatures remained near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in some parts of Texas, the state’s electricity demand has begun to fall, and the region’s power reserves rebounded to more than 3,000 megawatts, according to the website of grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Earlier on Thursday, they had dwindled to about 2,000 megawatts, just 3% of total demand.