ERCOT expects record demand
Grid operator seeks to reassure Texas customers even while predicting electricity use this summer will reach all-time highs
ERCOT sought to reassure worried Texans that the state’s electricity grid will have enough power to meet record-breaking demand this summer, less than three months after a catastrophic power failure left millions in freezing darkness.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas on Thursday released its final seasonal forecast for this summer, predicting record peak power demand of 77,144 megawatts. The summer record was set on August 12, 2019, when demand hit 74,820 megawatts.
The grid manager said it expects to have enough generation to meet the record demand, forecasting generation capacity of 86,862 megawatts. ERCOT, however, didn’t rule out the possibility for “tight grid conditions” on the hottest summer days when demand for air conditioning is at its highest. Electricity supply is often stretched during Texas’ blazing summers.
“If we get into a combination of (high demand) and low wind or low solar output or a high number of generators that have been unavailable because they’ve been running so hard, then we may need to go into emergency operations,” said Woody Rickerson, ERCOT’s vice president of planning and operations.
Emergency operations allow ERCOT to tap into additional power resources, including 2,300 additional megawatts of generation, enough to power nearly half a million homes on a hot summer day.
ERCOT’s summer forecast comes less than three months after a February winter storm knocked out much of the state’s power grid, leading to nearly 200 deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. The state grid manager in November had forecast it would have enough power generation to meet demand during the past winter — a forecast that would prove to be remarkably mistaken.
“This was a failure of imagination on the part of ERCOT,” Rob Allerman, Enverus’ senior director of power analytics said in a conference call with reporters last week. “They weren’t ever thinking that it could get that cold.”
The summer forecast also comes less than a month after ERCOT in mid-April called on power customers to conserve energy after higher-than-expected temperatures and power plant maintenance outages caused electricity supplies to become tighter than forecast. The outsized demand and idled generating capacity shrank power reserves to about 1,000 megawatts on April 14, ERCOT said.
In light of the catastrophic power failure in the winter, ERCOT on Thursday said it took into account three additional extreme weather scenarios to create its summer electricity forecast, considering scenarios of high heat and low wind or forced power plant outages that have less than a 1 percent chance of occurring. For comparison, ERCOT said the February winter storm was a 1 in 100 event.
“I think the consumers in Texas can be very confident that these are extremely unlikely scenarios,” said Warren Lasher, ERCOT’s senior director of system planning. “We recognize that we failed to appropriately communicate what the potential risks were going into the winter season. These additional extreme scenarios are our initial attempt to proactively try to not only communicate what those extreme risks are, but try to restore the trust of the consumers in Texas.”
For the first time, ERCOT said, it will visit a select group of power plants to evaluate their summer weatherization plans, reviewing plans for cooling critical equipment and stocking fuel supplies. The grid manager also said it will coordinate with power utilities, such as CenterPoint Energy , to limit planned outages to maintain transmission and power lines during the summer months and request power plants to contact natural gas suppliers to ensure availability of the fuel through pipelines.
If power demand exceeds supply, ERCOT said it is prepared to call for emergency operations, including ordering power utilities to turn off power to customers to preserve the integrity of the grid.
ERCOT expects a significant number of solar farms and battery storage projects to come online this summer, which can help the grid meet record demand. Enverus, an Austin energy research firm, said it expects 10,000 megawatts of solar power and nearly 36,000 megawatts of wind power to be available by August — a combined increase of more than 8,000 megwatts from April.
Allerman with Enverus said ERCOT’s historic emphasis on summer preparedness and the addition of new solar and wind power will likely prevent a massive grid collapse similar to that in February. But he, too, didn’t rule out the possibility for rolling outages.
“If we do have power outages, it’ll be short in duration,” Allerman said. “Could we have outages? Sure, it’s possible. But nothing like we saw this winter.”