Central Texas near 100 degrees: what August heat means for your power bill and food supply

A KCENTV.com forecast this week puts Central Texas highs near 100°F with no significant relief in sight. That is not a surprise for August in the Hill Country or the Brazos Valley. What matters for your household isn't the temperature number — it's what that number does to your refrigerator, your electric bill, your ERCOT grid margin, and the person in your home who is most vulnerable to heat.

What's actually changing

August heat waves in Texas are not new. What has changed is the baseline. ERCOT has repeatedly set all-time demand records in recent summers, and grid operators have issued conservation appeals on days when the reserve margin shrinks to single digits. The grid has not failed catastrophically since February 2021, and significant weatherization work has been done on generation assets since then. But the system still runs tight on peak afternoons, typically between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. when solar output drops and AC load stays high.

The second shift is economic. Recent EIA data shows Texas residential electricity rates have risen measurably over the past two years. If you are on a variable-rate plan, a sustained heat wave does not just raise your usage — it can spike your per-kilowatt-hour cost at the exact moment you need the most electricity.

Food safety is the under-discussed third factor. The USDA food safety threshold is two hours in temperatures above 40°F. During a grid event or even a routine outage, your refrigerator holds safe temperature for roughly four hours (unopened). Your freezer holds for about 48 hours if full, 24 if half-full. Most households have no plan for that clock.

What we'd actually do

Sign up for ERCOT's emergency text alerts and check your utility's demand-response program. ERCOT issues Conservation Appeals and Emergency Notices through utilities; your specific provider — whether that's Oncor, CenterPoint, or a co-op like Pedernales — may have an opt-in alert system. Knowing a Conservation Appeal is active at 2 p.m. gives you a three-hour window to pre-cool your house, shift laundry, and charge devices before the grid tightens at peak.

Pre-cool aggressively between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., then raise your thermostat. Running your AC hard during off-peak morning hours and setting the thermostat to 78–80°F during peak hours (3–8 p.m.) reduces grid stress and cuts your bill. Thermal mass in a house cooled to 73°F by noon will absorb several hours of heat before hitting 78°F. This is not comfortable minimalism; it's timed load-shifting that costs nothing.

Build a $30 power-outage food kit this week. A simple cooler, a bag of dry ice (available at most HEB and Kroger stores across Texas), and a printed USDA food-safety decision chart stored on your fridge door costs under $30. Dry ice keeps a cooler below 32°F for 24–48 hours. Knowing you have it means you won't open the refrigerator compulsively during an outage, which is exactly what drains safe temperature fastest.

Identify your household's single highest heat-vulnerability person and make a written plan for them. That might be an elderly parent in a back bedroom, a toddler, or yourself if you have a cardiovascular condition. The plan needs one cooling location outside the house (a library, an HEB, a community center), a trigger condition (indoor temperature above 85°F for more than one hour), and a name responsible for executing it. The Texas Division of Emergency Management maintains a list of cooling centers by county — find yours now, not during an outage.

Audit your window units and your attic insulation before the next heat wave peaks. A clogged filter on a window AC unit can reduce efficiency by 15–20%. A house with inadequate attic insulation (anything under R-38 in Central Texas) is paying to cool the sky. Neither fix requires a contractor visit to diagnose. Pull the filter and hold it to light; if you can't see through it, wash or replace it today.

The bigger picture

Texas will have more heat waves. The question is whether your household treats each one as a novel emergency or a known condition with a rehearsed response. The families who fare best are not the ones who bought the most gear — they're the ones who made decisions in advance so they don't have to make them at 4 p.m. when it's 99°F inside and the grid is on a Conservation Appeal.

Durability is not drama. It's a cooler with dry ice, a printed plan, and a charged phone.