During several days of the heat wave this summer … ERCOT was obliged to request that Texans cut back on their use of electricity during the late afternoon and early evening hours [to avoid blackouts]
The problem is that Texas has invested heavily in wind and solar power… [and] during several days in August, the wind was not blowing enough for Texas’s wind farms to operate at optimal capacity. At the same time, as the sun went down, Texas’s solar arrays gradually stopped providing power as well.
TX is in a unique place since their grid is not interconnected.
One of the handy features of battery storage as well as renewables is the short time between saying go to the first kWh moved. Meanwhile building a nuclear plant is damn near planting a tree you’ll never lie in the shade of. It helps a problem you’ll have in 20+ years, Texas has problems now.
Also, their problem is best solved by connecting their grid. They’re trying to add intermittency with baseload, those are two different things.