The control room for the Texas electric grid is dominated by a Cineplex-sized screen along one wall. As outdoor temperatures plunged to Arctic levels around the low-slung building 30 miles from Austin last Sunday night, all eyes were on it. The news wasn¡¯t good.
Electric demand for heat across the state was soaring, as expected, but green dots on the corner state map started flipping to red. Each was a regional power generator, and they were spontaneously shutting down ¡ª three coal plants followed quickly by a gas plant in Corpus Christi.
Then another metric began to flash: frequency, a measure of electricity flow on the grid. The 60 hertz needed for stability fell to 59.93.
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