The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is calling for voluntary power conservation tonight, less than a day after issuing an emergency alert after a sudden drop in power reserves.
ERCOT, operator of the electric grid for most of the state, issued a conservation alert effective 6-10pm ET today, citing expected high weather-related power demand and concerns over insufficient reserves. The low reserves are stemming in part from below-average wind power generation.
The periods of most concern are not during peak usage, which are typically close to 4pm local time, but in the early evening, near 8pm, when solar power supply drops off but demand has not yet dropped significantly.
On Wednesday ERCOT initiated a Level 2 energy emergency at about 8:45pm ET warning that operating reserves had suddenly dropped below 1,750MWs and were not expected to recover for more than 30 minutes. ERCOT said it accessed additional power resources during the emergency, including through interconnections with neighboring grids and agreements with large industrial customers who will cut power use during such events in exchange for a fee.
The Level 2 emergency was one step above Level 3, when ERCOT would begin controlled rolling blackouts across large parts of the state to prevent a larger, longer outage of the grid. The last time ERCOT issued orders for rolling blackouts was in February 2021 when extreme cold took offline both power plants and equipment to run pipelines that supply natural gas to power plants. Those rolling blackouts stretched into many days without power across much of the state, leading to hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in economic damages.
ERCOT has broken power demand records repeatedly this summer, setting an all-time peak demand record on 10 August of 85,435MW. Yesterday ERCOT broke the September record for power demand set last year by more than 10,000 MW, recording a peak of 82,705 MW.
A weather watch issued by ERCOT earlier this week expires tomorrow.
