A Pittsburgh-based company announced it will add a route for self-driving tractor-trailer rigs from Fort Worth to El Paso.

Aurora Innovations, Inc. debuted a driverless semi from Dallas to Houston in May and will now add the new 600-mile route from Fort Worth, according to a news release. The Dallas-to-Houston trip was the first of its kind in the United States, according to Aurora.

Zooming in: A new district in the Alliance area for the deployment of semi- and fully autonomous semis was approved by the Fort Worth City Council in November, according to previous reporting.

Using Aurora Driver hardware, the company plans to deploy hundreds of driverless trucks to meet strong customer demand. 

The details: There are currently five driverless trucks regularly delivering freight with a perfect on-time and safety record, according to the company.

The new hardware will detect objects 1,000 meters away, twice the distance of the current trucks. 

The cities of Fort Worth and Keller experienced an increase in its 65-and-older population from 2020-23, according to the American Community Survey 5-year estimates data profiles.

The city of Roanoke is the only municipality in the area that saw an overall decrease in senior citizens during that time frame.

The details: While Keller's senior population had an overall increase, there was a dip in 2021 where senior residents went from a population of 6,614 to 6,387. Overall, in the four-year span between 2020 and 2023, Keller's senior population increased by 6.8%. 

Zooming in: Compared to the state of Texas, Roanoke and Fort Worth have a lower senior population percentage compared to those cities' overall population.

The Texas power grid is expected to hold up this winter, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Dec. 9. This is due in part to “tremendous supply growth on the ERCOT grid,” ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said, amid an influx of data centers coming to the state.

The overview: Since last winter, over 11,000 megawatts of generating capacity have been added to the ERCOT grid, Vegas said. That growth, which largely comes from battery storage and solar facilities, could be used to power about 2.8 million homes during periods of peak electric demand.

Zooming in: Under most weather conditions, there is a less than 2% chance of a grid emergency through February, ERCOT found.

However, Texas could be in trouble in the unlikely event that a repeat of Winter Storm Uri hits large parts of the state this winter, although ERCOT noted that the probability of such a severe storm happening again was "well under one percent." The February 2021 freeze devastated an unprepared power grid, resulting in nearly 250 deaths.