The Texas electrical grid has had a busy few days.
According to Trudi Webster, a spokesperson for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, previous conservation initiatives have resulted in around 500 megawatts of demand being lowered from the grid. Wind enhancements, rain in portions of the state, and new reliability tools all helped the grid operator get through peak hours in the last week, according to Webster.
According to a tweet from Doug Lewin, president of Stoic Energy Consulting, batteries delivered 1,175 megawatts of electricity on Friday, just as the difference between supply and demand on the power system hit its lowest point at 7:50 p.m. According to ERCOT, one megawatt of electricity can power approximately 200 Texas houses during peak demand periods.
“There had been a lot of batteries installed over the last year and a half that hadn’t been used.” Those appeared. “They came through big time,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources expert at the University of Texas at Austin.
Unexpected nighttime showers also cooled down areas of the state on Thursday and Sunday. According to Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist with UT Austin’s Energy Institute, this cooling reduced the need for air conditioning and helped air conditioning run more efficiently, reducing electricity demand by a few thousand megawatts.
“I remember watching the demand fall quickly as soon as rain hit Dallas,” Rhodes said, referring to the grid operator’s real-time demand and supply dashboard on Sunday.
Before last week, ERCOT had encouraged Texans to save energy three times this summer, including twice the week before. However, ERCOT’s first demand and supply prediction for the day on Thursday morning showed the two lines crossing in the late afternoon, a scenario that could cause weeks of damage to the power infrastructure if it occurred.
That morning, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas notified the Texas Public Utilities Commission that there was a “high likelihood” that the grid will go into emergency mode in the afternoon. Later that day, San Antonio’s mayor and a few state lawmakers cautioned the public to be prepared for probable outages.
ERCOT identified poor wind or solar generation as reasons for decreased predicted electricity supplies in each of its conservation requests to the public. However, Alison Silverstein, an independent energy consultant and former advisor to both the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Texas Public Utility Commission, believes that the main reason for power grid stress this summer is a massive increase in demand due to prolonged hot weather across the state and population growth.
This summer, the Texas power grid established ten preliminary records for electricity demand, with the latest record of 85,435 megawatts set a few weeks ago. Prior to this summer, the record was set in July 2022 at 80,038 megawatts.
“That was not something ERCOT, the PUC, or the generation industry planned for,” Silverstein said. “And to say it’s the fault of the wind — no, it’s the fault of climate change.” It’s all because of the heat.”
To keep the system stable as Texas continues to experience hot summers and more residents and companies, Silverstein and Webber believe ERCOT will need to improve demand management. Conservation requests, like as those issued in recent days, are one approach to accomplish this. According to an ERCOT letter on its use of energy conservation, ERCOT issued more over 50 conservation requests between 2008 and July 2022.
The grid operator “has seen time and again that small actions to conserve energy make a big difference,” according to the memo: Texans cut energy use by around 500 megawatts during a June 2021 conservation request, and other electrical market participants including transmission and distribution companies reduced usage by another 2,500 megawatts. However, conservation demands rely on voluntary reductions in electricity usage and “people’s goodwill,” which Silverstein believes some Texans may not have for ERCOT after the 2021 blackout. “The more you ask, the more I think this is going to be like the boy who cried wolf,” she said.
Finally, Webber and Silverstein stated that Texas requires more formal mechanisms for reducing and managing electricity use. One example is energy efficiency, which is using less energy to obtain the same result, such as through enhancing home insulation, replacing older appliances, or switching to LED light bulbs. The other type is demand response, which includes programs that pay customers to minimize energy consumption when it is limited and stimulate them to utilize energy when it is plentiful.
