Last Updated, 7/13, 7:45 p.m.
Temperatures in North Texas reached 104 degrees by 3 p.m., which was exactly an hour after the agency that manages our power grid formally requested conservation from its users.
Around noon, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas warned that demand for electricity on Wednesday may outpace supply. The press release asked that everyone conserve once again between the hours of 2 p.m. and 9 p.m., but said that it expected no system-wide outages.
An hour before the conservation measures started, the state’s demand for electricity was 73,390 megawatts, while its committed capacity (or supply) was at 76,601 megawatts. There was about 2,900 megawatts of reserve capacity, which is markedly less than we had at that point Monday, the first time ERCOT asked everyone to power down. One megawatt can power about 200 homes on a summer day.
Unlike Monday, ERCOT predicted that the tightest hour would be between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., with a forecasted demand of 78,451 megawatts. At 4 p.m. demand was at 78,350, and committed capacity was 76,897, with about 2,702 megawatts of reserve capacity. One megawatt can power about 200 homes on a summer day.
By 7:30 p.m., it looked like once again the state had dodged a bullet when it comes to the prospect of rolling outages, with demand at 74,139 megawatts and committed capacity at 77,512 megawatts. While there were some close calls (at one point it looked like there was a considerable gap between demand and supply around 3:30 p.m.), most were breathing a sigh of relief by about 5 p.m. when it looked like demand was slowing.
However, around 5:30 p.m., the city of Farmersville tweeted that it would be conducting its own rolling blackouts at the behest of ERCOT. Both ERCOT and the Public Utilities Commission denied making that request, and by 7 p.m., the city walked that back, telling WFAA that it was a “miscommunication.”
“We are aware that the previous post caused alarm and we are sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused,” City Manager Ben White told the station.
Some residents in northeast Dallas reported outages, but those don’t appear to be due to anything related to today’s supply concerns, as the PUC said any outages “are local in nature.” And it’s worth noting that a lot of things can shut power down, anything from a downed tree, a car wreck hitting a utility pole, or a transformer malfunction.
You can keep an eye on outages here and here.
The ongoing worry about demand outpacing supply comes from a confluence of things. ERCOT says that thermal generation—that means coal- and gas-powered plants—is experiencing forced outages beyond what the agency anticipated for the day (coming up about 13,000 megawatts short), wind generation is down, and developing cloud cover in West Texas reduced the amount of solar power available.
The first issue is the biggest one. Coal and gas account for the largest part of the state’s electricity generating capacity, with wind coming in a distant second and solar trailing in third. To say that wind and solar caused the problem would be akin to saying I failed to out-rebound LeBron James when I’m only 5 foot 2. Give me another couple of feet in height and then tell me I failed to out-rebound LeBron.
“We have more than 50 percent of electricity that comes from natural gas. And for the gas turbine, when the temperature increases, they cannot produce full load because the unit becomes so hot. So they have to reduce their output to keep the temperature down,” Wei-Jen Lee, director of the University of Arlington’s Energy Systems Research Center, explained to the Fort Worth Report, adding that if you ran those plants 24/7 in the heat, they could break down.
How possible is it that we go dark (and hot) when supply can’t keep up with demand (which could happen a lot this summer)? Here’s what we know: Electricity providers statewide have a plan to rotate outages so we’re not all dark and hot at once, and not for a long stretch of time like what we dealt with during Winter Storm Uri. If we do exceed capacity and ERCOT initiates rolling blackouts, this would test the strength of that plan.
In April, the Public Utilities Commission rolled out a statewide electricity supply chain map that shows not only who is providing power to the grid, but who provides the fuel for that power.
“All the layers of facilities on the map will help the state’s planning and response to fix problems real-time and prioritize electricity service during emergencies,” Wei Wang, Railroad Commission of Texas Executive Director and vice chair of the committee that created the map, said at the time.
There are also several things ERCOT does now to (hopefully) avoid the massive grid failure that happened in 2021. Should conservation not align supply and demand, the agency can borrow from neighboring grids, pay large industrial users to reduce their power while the state deploys those operating reserves, and yes, rolling blackouts and brownouts. All of those things are dependent on how low the reserves get, and you can see that laid out here.
This morning, wholesale electricity prices were somewhere around $67 per megawatt hour. At 4 p.m., prices were well over $5,000 per megawatt hour, and that lasted until around 6 p.m., when prices began to fall again. During Winter Storm Uri, wholesale prices at or near the $9,000 ERCOT price cap for almost four days. According to the U.S. Energy Department, for consumers with fixed-rate plans, that meant about a 7 percent increase on their February bills that month. (Those on dynamic pricing structures were a whole other ballgame.)
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