"Electricity prices briefly surged past a $9,000 a megawatt-hour price cap in Texas as extreme heat sent power demand skyrocketing and forced the state’s grid operator to declare an emergency.
...At one point on Tuesday afternoon, the region had just 2,121 megawatts left in power reserves, less than 3% of total demand on the system.
...The unprecedented rally highlights how fragile Texas power markets -- and to a lesser extent, markets across the U.S. -- have become as giant, conventional power plants retire, squeezed out by cheap natural gas and renewable energy resources.
Texas’s grid operator has been warning for months that plant shutdowns and increasing electricity demand has left it with slim supply margins....This week’s price spikes also underscore how dependent the region’s power grid has become on wind farms, which now make up about a quarter of the generation capacity in Texas.
Lackluster breezes contributed to the higher prices, said Flannan Hehir, a power analyst at energy data provider Genscape..."
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