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 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months 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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[–] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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.