TEXAS VIEW: Blackout threat looms for Texas this summer

The great drought of 2011 has continued into 2012 for much of Texas — 60 percent of its counties, as of Jan. 31, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — and the situation has led to numerous other issues.

The lack of water is one discussed most often, it seems. That’s not as much of a problem in the Texas Forest Country, where water resources could be considered plentiful, especially when compared to the plight of other regions.

One issue that will affect all Texans, however, is the potential of rolling power outages this summer if we have a repeat of the blistering temperatures we had last year. In fact, the likelihood of blackouts would be even higher this year, it appears, due to Texas’ lower reserve capacity (13.75 percent currently, compared to 17 percent last summer, according to a San Antonio Express-News story) and the difficulty of building new power plants.

Our region is contributing to the energy grid with the opening of Aspen Power’s biomass plant and the planned startup of a larger biomass plant in Nacogdoches County. But the combined 150-plus megawatts of power produced by those facilities will be forwarded to the overall Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid, so it’s not like we will see any benefit in our own homes (or on our own utility bills) in Deep East Texas.

Bottom line: If Texans want to do their part to avoid rolling blackouts — something that’s not the least bit pleasant on 100-degree days — we all need to learn, and practice, better energy-saving habits in our homes and businesses.

The Texas Public Utility Commission is pushing for an education campaign in public schools to make sure our kids know about the state’s long-term energy demands. For now, educating both children and adults about conserving energy is our best hope for avoiding blackouts. There is so much that goes into constructing a new power plant, as Aspen Power president Danny Vines told a Lufkin civic group this week, that it’s unreasonable to think Texas can prevent future energy shortages by simply building more facilities.

Right now, while energy prices are low and the weather is nice, is the best time to implement energy-saving ideas. There’s a good “EnergySavers” document at energysavers.gov that has numerous suggestions. The more that all of us can do both now and when the summer heat arrives the better chance we have of making the rolling power outages unnecessary.