Texas heat brings the state's power grid closest it has been to outages since 2021 winter storm

The sweltering heat wave in Texas has the power grid manager again asking residents to cut electricity use. This comes a day after the system was pushed to the brink of outages for the first time since a deadly winter blackout in 2021. The request by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas comes after low power reserves prompted the grid operator to issue a level 2 energy emergency alert Wednesday night. This was the first time ERCOT entered emergency operations since a 2021 ice storm knocked out power to millions for days and resulted in hundreds of deaths. ERCOT serves most of the state’s 30 million residents.