Power companies are shutting so many generating plants in Texas and California that the two most populous U.S. states may struggle to keep the lights on this summer.
Texas is facing a generation shortfall in part because there are 5,000 megawatts of power plants that have been retired in the past year, according to a report Wednesday from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., or NERC, which oversees reliability on the grid. That’s enough to power about 1 million Texas homes.
Meanwhile, California faces a “significant risk” of not having enough power reserves on hand related in part to the retirement of 789 megawatts of natural gas generation. That’s exacerbated by low snowpack that will reduce the amount of available hydropower, as well as restrictions on gas supplies in Southern California due to massive leaks at the Aliso Canyon storage facility that began in 2015.
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