Natural gas kept the lights on in Texas during the coldest days of this past January, just the way it did in Virginia.The popular Democratic nonsense narrative that Texas is achieving energy nirvana with all its solar and wind and battery assets should just be disregarded.

You can see above what was working during the peak cold period in the Lone Star state, which goes it alone on electricity and is not part of an interstate energy marketplace like our PJM Interconnection. Battery assets, all the rage with the 2026 Virginia General Assembly, made only minor contributions on the shoulders of when solar was available.

Texas relies less on nuclear or coal power than Virginia and PJM, so natural gas may have been an even larger contributor than here to maintaining power service. Reported WattsUpWithThat.Com:

From January 24 through January 27, fossil fuels and nuclear power delivered 77% of the electricity, wind delivered a fairly steady 15% and the combination of solar power and batteries delivered a paltry 8% of the electricity generation… (The wind actually does not look that steady in that graph but faded as solar rose.)

In a similar (and deadly) energy crunch during Winter Storm Uri in 2021, Texas natural gas generation often failed because the cold interrupted operations or the delivery of fuel. It happened again last month, to largely the same extent, but Texas has added natural gas assets in the intervening years, and had more gas in storage this time. 

There were days in the period when solar generation was nil, and on days when it did show up (see chart below), it did so after the early AM peak that hit before sunrise. Then it faded to nothing at the early evening sunset. The same happened within PJM, and adding hundreds of square miles of new panels won’t make the sun shine at night or through storm clouds.

–SDH