Power surge

ERCOT braces for record-breaking power demand across Texas this summer

ERCOT predicts power demand will hit a peak of more than 92.2 gigawatts this summer.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages about 90 percent of the state’s power, is waving a warning flag: The ERCOT grid may set a new record for peak demand in summer 2026.

Based on expectations for a hotter summer this year than last year, ERCOT predicts power demand will hit a peak of more than 92.2 gigawatts this summer — enough power for roughly 18.4 million homes.

“Given the potential for extreme heat combined with significant load growth, ERCOT may surpass its current all-time summer peak,” the organization says in its 2026 summertime forecast.

Further taxing the ERCOT grid are power-hungry data centers and cryptocurrency-mining facilities.

Last year’s peak summer demand for ERCOT reached 83.7 megawatts on August 18, and all-time peak demand of 85.5 gigawatts was recorded on August 10, 2023.

Fortunately, ERCOT believes the grid is in good shape to withstand this summer’s heat: It found a 0.09 percent chance of a grid emergency in June and a 0.21 percent chance in July.

More generation of electricity from solar and wind is helping ERCOT meet stepped-up demand prompted by population growth, and the significant power needs of data centers and cryptocurrency-mining facilities.

About 27 million Texas customers depend on power from ERCOT’s grid.

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This story was first published on our sister site EnergyCapitalHTX.

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global ranking news

UT Southwestern declared No. 69 best university globally in new report

UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas is the No. 2 best hospital in Texas, and No. 1 in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Photo courtesy of UT Southwestern

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Dallas' UT Southwestern Medical Center is soaring toward the top of the class worldwide. The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) has ranked UT Southwestern at No. 69 in the world on its prestigious Global 2000 list for 2026.

UT Southwestern also ranks as the No. 2 university in Texas and No. 34 in the U.S.

Each year, CWUR grades more than 21,000 universities around the world based on four factors without relying on surveys and university data submissions: education (25 percent), employability (25 percent), faculty (10 percent), and research (40 percent). For the 2026 edition, 81 million outcome-based data points were analyzed for the rankings, and the schools that placed at the top made the Global 2000 list.

Here's how CWUR ranked UT Austin's performance across the four categories:

No. 43 – Faculty rank
No. 43 – Education rank
No. 178 – Research rank
Unranked in employability

UT Southwestern often gets ranked as one of the best educational institutions, and it's also one of the best hospitals in Texas.

A total of 313 universities in the U.S. made the cut, and only two other Texas universities earned spots among the top 100: The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University in College Station. UT Austin ranked No. 1 statewide, No. 22 nationally, and No. 35 globally; and Texas A&M ranked No. 3 statewide, No. 44 nationally, and No. 91 globally.

In the past year, U.S. News and World Report, Forbes, and WalletHub, have praised the home of the Longhorns as one of the best universities in America. It's a listmaker's favorite in other global ranking reports, including those that focus on graduate schools. UT has maintained its high-ranking status in these annual rankings even as university leaders face criticism from students for closing and consolidating several programs.

These are the top 10 best universities in the world for 2026, according to CWUR:

Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Stanford University
University of Cambridge
University of Oxford
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Columbia University
Yale University
University of Chicago

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