Just like your dad tells you how much he loves Yellowstone, Texas summer is 100 percent on point this year. It’s July and it’s hot. We knew this was going to happen, because it’s been hot in Texas every summer that Texas has had a summer. It’s our business.
It’s a proven scientific fact that Texas has eight seasons: Fall, Winter, Spring, Pre-Summer, Summer, Relentless Terror, Hades Balls, and Fake Fall. As any meteorologist will tell you, July 1st is the first day of the season of unrelenting terror. We all know the worst is yet to come.
The forecast shows that getting outdoors this week will once again be an eyesore, with no respite in sight. Looks like we’re about 10,000 on the Scoville scale today (closer to Carolina Reaper if you’re putting your hand on the pavement).
With all this totally predictable weather, ERCOT is worried again. Because somehow, they didn’t see it coming?
It’s one thing to be unprepared when the Texas winter hits minus fourteen degrees. But Texas is so hot in the summer it’s just Texas wearing its signature outfit.
ERCOT recently called for “voluntary conservation” because excess heat could lead to an energy emergency as we all cool our homes in a panic. They’d love it if you set your AC to 78 degrees or higher and turn your ceiling fan up to 11 (assuming you have one and your interior designer didn’t remove all the ceiling fans from your house years ago 2000 during the 2000s). era of commercial spaces).
Want to understand what’s going on with the grid?
This piece explores how high demand and extreme temperatures will affect consumer wallets in the near future.
If it’s an energy emergency, we need everyone to comply. But only a small percentage of people will follow these voluntary guidelines. Do you want full cooperation? We will have to gamify this situation: we want points for every megawatt of energy we save on the grid.
Every hour we raise our thermostats above 75 degrees, we get an E-Buck, and when DFW reaches 1000 E-Bucks, Mayor Eric Johnson pays for everyone’s lunch at Nick & Sam’s. Every time DFW reduces the voltage on the grid by 1 megawatt, someone at the head of ERCOT dips into a tank full of wasabi. Get 10 megawatts saved and Matthew McConaughey will be banging bongos across Greg Abbott’s forehead. It will be a lot of fun. #1 Victory Royale.
Currently, the big idea of ERCOT is that they ask me to turn off the lights and close the blinds while I’m not doing laundry all day; I’m telling you right here and now that this won’t save energy for anyone. because that’s the standard I’ve already set. You’re doing your grid math wrong if you think Tide Ultra Stain Release and I have been dedicated to making my whites whiter at 2pm every day with the windows open.
We need some new ideas. Start giving us conservation rewards beyond “YES! Nothing collapsed!” and the grill will never have a problem again.
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