VERIFY: No, Wind and Solar aren't to blame for TEXAS power losses | 10 Tampa Bay

Описание: As millions of Texans continue to face rolling power outages, many politicians and social media posts have started to blame renewable energy sources. They say Texas wouldn’t be in this situation if it hadn’t relied on wind and solar power. So is that true? We’ve had our VERIFY team investigating.

Are wind and solar power the main causes of widespread power shortages in Texas?

Why are we talking about this?

Well - Millions in the Lone Star state are still without power..and now politicians like Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller and US Senator Steve Daines. are pointing their fingers at renewable energy sources. Saying they’re to blame.

But is that actually what’s happening?

Our sources are multiple reports from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott.


First we need to explain that Texas has its own independent power grid which makes it difficult for them to borrow power from other regions.

90% of the Texas grid is managed by ERCOT. Right now they report that 185 “generating units” have gone offline during these storms. Because of “a combo of frozen wind turbines, limited gas supplies, low gas pressure, and frozen instrumentation.”

Texas Gov Abbott says one of the biggest problems? Frozen natural gas pipes. "It's frozen in the pipeline. It's frozen at the rig. It's frozen at the transmission line," Abbott said. "The natural gas providers are incapable of providing the natural gas that feeds into the generators that send power to people's residences.”

Here’s the breakdown.

“Approximately 46,000 MW of generation has been forced off the system during this extreme winter weather event. Of that, 28,000 MW is thermal and 18,000 MW is wind and solar.”

ERCOT says 46,000 MW of potential power can’t be generated; 61% of that loss is from thermal sources like natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants. And 39% is from Solar and wind energy.

Bottom Line: The claims that Wind and Solar power are the main cause of the current power shortages in Texas are FALSE.

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