. It didn’t take a heat wave or freak winter storm this time to raise the specter of rolling blackouts in Texas. All it took was a mild spring day. The fact that the state’s power system, serving nearly 30 million people, made an urgent plea for conservation with temperatures in the 80s Fahrenheit is prompting fresh questions about the need for reform less than two months after February’s deadly blackouts. “It’s a disgrace for a power grid in modern times to struggle to keep the lights on during a mild day,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University . “We’ll be in trouble when a summer heat wave comes in and demand is one-and-a-half times as much as it was yesterday.” Texas has long taken a laissez-faire approach to its power grid, allowing market […]