Bitcoin Takes Hit for State on the Grid
as Abbott Mum on Power Possibilities

Capitol Inside
July 11, 2022

As Texans braced on Monday amid warnings of rolling blackouts throughout the week, Governor Greg Abbott chose to ignore the weather on social media while touting Operation Lone Star and the Texas ranking as the top state for small business for the 18th year in a row.

It wasn't a good day for the fledgling crypto currency industry in Texas when several major Bitcoin miners were compelled to shut down their operations on Monday morning when the Electric Reliability and Resiliency Council of Texas was projecting that demand for power would exceed supply at times this afternoon.

Abbott had courted the companies vigorously - contending last summer that Texas would be "the crypto leader" with the industry's emergence here. The business has been mired in a slump - and reductions in output will increase the strain. But Texas Blockchain Association President Lee Bratcher said the voluntary shuttering freed up more than 1 percent of the grid's total capacity for use by retailers and commercial interests - or "over 1,000 megawatts worth of Bitcoin mining load” here.

After declaring the Texas power grid to be "more reliable & resilient than ever" after a freeze in February, Abbott's silence on the possibility of power outages resembled the public persona he employed in early 2021 up until the state's independent electricity system collapsed in the peak of a Winter Storm Uri.

But Mother Nature's latest stroke has reignited an issue that had been fizzling for the Democrats. The state notice of power shortage contingency plans prompted Democrat Beto O'Rourke to unveil a six-point plan that revolves on switching Texas to a national grid to help ensure the reliability that Abbott has promised but failed to deliver.

"We can’t rely on the grid when it’s hot," O'Rourke tweeted . "We can’t rely on the grid when it’s cold. We can’t rely on Greg Abbott. It’s time to vote him out and fix the grid."

The Republican governor will be taking a victory lap with fanfare if the ERCOT holds up in the current heat wave that sent the mercury sizzling to 110 degrees in Austin with a forecast of temperatures in the 106 degree range on average until late this week.

But Abbott may have determined that he simply has nothing to gain and substantial sums to lose if he attempted to warn constituents today in advance of controlled power interruptions that ERCOT said on Sunday night that it was prepared to have for three consecutive days.

An Abbott public service announcement on television or Twitter about a looming threat of power shortages would be tantamount to an admission that he'd been wrong with the glowing reviews that he bestowed on the grid early this year. Abbott set himself up for trouble before the ice storm this year when he guaranteed on its eve that the lights would stay on throughout it.

The governor got a lucky break when the freeze in February was limited to North Texas and the Panhandle while unfolding more like a cold snap across half the state. The event was no test of the grid's capability for weather that would be substantially worse like Uri had been a year before.

After posting a high temperature of 100 degrees on Sunday, Austin was sizzling at 106 degrees late this afternoon with more of the same for a few days.

more to come ...