Government
BY HANNAH NORTON
As temperatures rise and more people crank up their air conditioning, Texans are likely to wonder if the state’s power grid is prepared to meet electric demand. Texas’ power grid operator asked residents to conserve energy 11 times last summer and twice during a January arctic blast. Energy leaders face continued skepticism from residents in the three-plus years after the deadly power outages during Winter Storm Uri, the days- long freeze in February 2021. Community Impact sat down with leaders from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas on May 21 to discuss how the grid has evolved to meet the needs of Texas’ rapidly growing population and what residents can expect this summer. Current situation “The summer used to be a fairly simple season to manage,” ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas said. “You would have your hottest part of the day at three, four or five o’clock, and as long as you had enough supply during those hours, you were in good shape and you could get through the summer.” It’s not as simple today. ERCOT relies partially on solar power to meet high demand during the summer, resulting in a “rapidly declining energy source” as the sun sets, Vegas said. “Oftentimes, wind picks up in the evenings in Texas, and so you have kind of this handoff from the solar power to the wind power,” Vegas said. “But that doesn’t happen every day.” ERCOT CEO talks grid reliability, summer outlook
During periods of high demand with low wind and solar capacity or high outages at power plants, officials may call on Texans to voluntarily reduce their energy use for a few hours. For the first time since Winter Storm Uri, ERCOT briefly entered emergency operations Sept. 6 as power reserves dropped, although the grid operator said rotating power outages were not needed. Digging deeper With summer on the horizon, Vegas said there are “more generating resources available this summer than we’ve ever had before,” which will help offset declining solar power in the evenings. “We operate the grid with a conservative point of view on making sure there’s always enough committed generating resources to what we expect to happen over the next hour,” Vegas said. “And what that does, is it ensures that we have enough resources called up and ready to deliver, and we’re going to continue to operate the grid that way coming into the summer.” Power plants and transmission facilities across the state have been upgraded to ensure they can withstand extreme temperatures, said Venkat Tirupati, ERCOT’s vice president of DevOps and Grid Transformation. Legislation passed in 2021 required energy providers to “weatherize” their facilities after some power plants shut down during Winter Storm Uri. ERCOT did not confirm how many plants had been upgraded, but said officials have inspected 2,117 weatherized facilities since December 2021. This August, there is a 16% change of emer- gency conditions from 8-9 p.m. daily, when wind and solar power are low and more people are using electricity, ERCOT reported June 7. As Texas grows, officials project overall demand on the grid will rise from 85,000 megawatts to 150,000 by 2030.
When ERCOT asked Texans to help Below is a timeline of each time the grid operator asked Texans to conserve power from 2021-present, including two emergency incidents. Texans reduced their energy use by about 500 megawatts during recent voluntary conservation periods, ERCOT said. 2021 • February: five days of conservation requests; one grid emergency with rotating power outages • April: one conservation request • June: five days of conservation requests 2022 • July: two days of conservation requests
2023 • June: one conservation request
• August: seven days of conservation requests • September: two days of conservation requests; one grid emergency without mandatory outages
2024 • January: two days of conservation requests
Dallas
Houston
ERCOT’s service regions
Austin San Antonio
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Energy-saving tips To save energy during voluntary conservation periods, ERCOT recommends Texans:
Raise thermostats by a few degrees in the summer
Avoid using large and non-essential appliances or lights
Close blinds or curtains to block direct sunlight
Use fans to circulate cool air
SOURCE: ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL OF TEXAS/COMMUNITY IMPACT
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