Gas remains the workhorse of the Texas grid

Gas remains the unthanked prostitute of the Texas electricity grid. Texas is exposed to massive wind-generated electricity. As this source of energy needs lots of balancing capacity and also because Texas cannot use the rest of the Lower 48 to balance its production and demand, things get really ugly when they get ugly there. It’s actually a nice showpiece of the effects of wind power dominating your power generation. Gas does what it can to paper over the worst but every once in a while, disaster strikes which is very visible in power prices. But gas receives no thanks for taking the brunt of the problem away. It just gets blamed when even it cannot carry the load anymore. A load that wind caused and never paid for. 

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