Texans will be asked by the state’s power grid operator to conserve electricity as days swelter in summer heat for upcoming days.
A week before Dallas-Fort Worth recorded its hottest day of year to date as 95 degrees with heat index value of 103. The region saw a high 94 degrees in middle of February.
Help Conserve Power
ERCOT suggest saving power through these tips
Lowering or raising thermostat two or three degrees during weather watches
Turn pool pumps to shut off during peak hours
Turn off and unplug non essential lights and appliances.
Avoid using mega appliances and laundry machines.
HVAC systems power up to cool homes across the state it will tax fragile network.
The power grid is incapable of keeping up with demand as emergency measure according to Electricity Reliability Council of Texas,
ERCOT manage extreme weather events and assesses how it could disrupt the state ability to distribute power
It issues advisories that include Weather Watch to an Emergency Energy Alert.
Can your power utility shut off your power?
No during extreme weather events and not even for non payment of bill. The utility company must offer reasonable payment plan for after weather emergency has passed.
Public Utility Commission of Texas considers weather emergencies.
The highest temperature did not exceed 32 degrees. The temperature is predicted to remain at or low that level for next 24 hours anywhere in county.
The NWS issues a heat advisory for county or when such advisory issued on any one of the precedings two calendar days in a county.
The Texas state’s summer power shortages are reason of rapid population and economic progress which has left generators struggling to keep race with increase in load.
The state economy grew at average annual rate of 3.4% between 2017 and 2023 compared with 2.2% for country as a whole.
The state resident population spiked to 30.5 million in 2023 from 22 million in 2003 an average annual spike of 1.6%.
Texas energy sales have increase thrice times rapid than in rest of country where they increased at rate of just 0.6% per year between 2003 and 2023.
State power sales increased to 487 billion KWh in 2023 from 323 billion kWh in 2003 an average annual increase of 2.1%.
The Electricity Reliability Council of Texas ERCOT has warned reserve margins will be squeezed upcoming days as temperatures climb.
ERCOT has issued same warning various times over previous month after issuing several alerts calling on customers to decrease power consumption last summer to avoid danger of rolling blackouts.
ERCOT has faced several problems from periodic mismatches between generations and loads.
Texas has made political decision to limit cross border interconnections with other states to avoid oversight of electricity system by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission FERC.
Texas has shunned idea of paying power plants to maintain spare capacity rather for units of electricity generated.
To decrease costs state has operated an energy only market rather than capacity market.
ERCOT balancing problems are acute during summer season when daytime loads peak higher than rest of year as result of air conditioning.
To rebuild reserve margins reliability manages can issue no touch orders to generators and transmission owners instructing them to postpone urgent maintenance.
Reserve margins can deleted in autumn and spring shoulder seasons when gas fired coal fired and nuclear generation are taken offline for maintenance.
Heatwaves arrive far earlier than usual in spring than normal in autumn, many generators have schedule routine downtime.