There’s an earworm for you. Or for Texas, but the lyrics they should be using won’t exactly line up with the Beatles’ original chirpy optimism. It should sound more like a funeral dirge.

I’ve had a great time doing running commentary on Texas wind problems with the state’s now horribly blended energy posture, and hopefully y’all’ve learned a bunch, too. But when I came across this story this weekend, AY DIOS MIO.

Truly – it’s as if they’ve slipped back into medieval times, when the movements of mysterious orbs in the heavens caused great consternation and alarm, and there was nothing the frail and puny humans on Earth could do but cower before the darkness, waiting for it to pass.

The mighty state of Texas is girding its loins and warning the populace because of a solar eclipse next month.

I Schlitz you not.

How October’s solar eclipse could test the embattled Texas electric grid
The eclipse will be a faster, midday version of ERCOT’s frequent balancing act between renewables and backup electricity generation.

What have these people – these gullible, freakin’ fools – done to themselves and the residents of the state?

Texas quickly spiraled into a power emergency this week when record September demand and a drop in supply prompted appeals to consumers to conserve electricity to avoid blackouts.

Hot, humid weather put the squeeze on the grid, but another challenge looms next month: a solar eclipse that could slash renewables output and create an unprecedented test for the embattled grid.

What a bunch of argle-bargle cope is in this paragraph.

…This is the first summer where Texas needed renewables to meet peak demand, which is usually during daylight hours when the sun is strong, and then needed to bring backup generation (mostly in the form of natural gas) online to fill the resulting dip in solar output quickly at sunset.

Texas didn’t “need” renewables to “meet peak demand” this summer because regular fossil fuel plants failed to do so. It’s because they’ve reduced their reliable capacity in favor of renewables – for starters, by shutting down 6 coal-fired plants between 2018 and 2020 without replacing the lost reliable generation capacity – that has hamstrung the grid and blown prices through the roof.

And the planning that is going into an event like this is insane, when 20 years ago, no one cared WHAT the sun did – it had zero impact on whether you could run the dishwasher.

How stupid is this?

…Next month’s eclipse presents an unprecedented challenge for the Texas grid, which has seen a surge of solar development over the last few years….ERCOT is working with solar forecast vendors to create a special model for Oct. 14 so that it can be ready to rapidly bring backup supply online during the event and then sharply curtail it once the eclipse passes. The grid operator expects to start sharing details about its plan on Oct. 5

“Solar forecast vendors”? That’s a thing? Everybody’s got a grift these days. Little did I know I missed my calling. I have a crystal ball and a Ouija Board in the garage somewhere.

ERCOT has 22GW of solar generation capacity installed, which on the average beautiful bright day produces 13GW (oh, that’s efficient). So far, they’re “forecasting” that it’ll be dark enough to reduce the cells to only 13% of “clear sky” capability (estimates the terrestrial solar radiation under a cloudless sky as a function of the solar elevation angle, site altitude, aerosol concentration, water vapor, and various atmospheric conditions)

Dropping that generation off a cliff in the middle of the day is going to be problematic. ERCOT’s going to have to do this complicated power dance to compensate for both the renewable plunge, and then shutting everything fossil fuel-wise back down as the sun emerges from behind the moon, and solar spools back up.

It seems truly ridiculous, inefficient, and unreliable to me. Oh, wait a minute…it’s an all-the-time thing? That does not seem “efficient,” either, no?

…The solar eclipse is a one-off but represents an acute challenge that grids can face on a daily basis when unexpectedly cloudy conditions can cause output from solar panels to plunge.

NO ONE expects the UNEXPECTEDLY CLOUDY!!!

Cope. Serious cope. There shouldn’t be “daily challenges” in any power generation system that millions of people depend on. Sorry, not sorry.

And the power company has all sorts of excuses about demand and the hoops they have to jump through to meet it. It’s not just hot this time, it’s “humid.” Do. Tell. In Texas in the summer?

There’s a news flash.

Every additional hoop is a potential disaster in the making for the grid to collapse, and a cost factor in keeping it limping along.

And you can bet your sweet bippy all this scrambling is going to cost a pretty penny.

…Power prices will likely be volatile on the day of the eclipse, though it’ll depend on how hot and humid Texas still is in mid-October. During the emergency Wednesday evening, spot power prices in ERCOT topped the price cap set at $5,000 a megawatt-hour, quadruple the cost of supply secured for the period in the day-ahead market.

Grid operators are actually hopeful Texas rubes will be thrilled by the “novelty” of the eclipse, as if they were 3d graders And in the excitement not notice they’ve had their a/c shut off yet again, because the fools have no power for them.

It’s a small price to pay when THE EARTH IS BOILING, so get used to it suckers.

…Texas residents may be asked to conserve again during the eclipse, and the novelty of the event could help overcome grid alert fatigue amid a summer of near-record heat for the state. With climate change set to push temperatures higher still in the coming decades and the Texas grid’s transformation to include more solar and wind, the lessons of this summer and the coming solar eclipse will prove vital to ensuring grid stability going forward.

If they jack this up, there’s another eclipse in April to beef up their learning curve, and see of they can get Texans over the GAFS – Grid Alert Fatigue Syndrome.

Lucky thing the stars at night are big and bright.

Something has to be.

They can’t keep the lights on and no one in charge seems very smart.