Four years after Winter Storm Uri, lessons learned and changes made have made the Texas electric grid more reliable, ERCOT CEO tells WFAA
DALLAS — Electricity will be in shorter supply across Texas on Thursday as extremely cold temperatures dip further into the state, but it will not be enough to create emergency conditions on the power grid, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas told WFAA.
“It’ll be a little tighter tomorrow than it will be today because it’s going to get colder, and the large portion of the cold front will move through Texas overnight and into tomorrow morning and then through tomorrow,” Vegas said.
On Wednesday, according to live grid conditions, ERCOT had about 10,000 megawatts of pad in case a generator suddenly went offline.
One megawatt can power about 250 homes.
Vegas said ERCOT, which manages the Texas electric grid, is ready and operating normally. Despite a shorter supply on Thursday, the state should not experience an electric emergency, he predicted.
“We’re not expecting to have any kind of emergency conditions tomorrow morning, but it’ll be a little tighter, but we should have the resources available,” Vegas said. “We’ll be monitoring the performance of the renewables of the traditional power plants all throughout the day. And tonight, I’d ask folks to stay tuned to the communications channels that we have out there.”
Demand during the winter is different than the extreme heat during the summer.
During cold weather events, Vegas said, the most demand typically happens before the sun comes up as Texans get ready for work and school. During the summer, most of the demand occurs in the evening as people return home and before the sun sets.
Clouds blanketed parts of the state on Wednesday but with more sun in the forecast tomorrow, Vegas said, that will allow solar generation to increase.
“We’ll see more solar generation tomorrow than we will today. We have pretty strong wind today. That’s going to be declining as we go through the evening into tomorrow, but then it picks back up again as we get into the weekend,” he explained. “The wind varies more than the solar. Typically, you know, you can count on the sun rising and the sun setting so you can plan on that a little bit better. But overall, yeah, it looks like we’ve got enough resources across the front for all of us.”
Winter Storm Uri devastated ERCOT four years ago when power generators froze in sub-zero conditions and the supply of natural gas that powers most generating stations slowed or even stopped. Large utilities like Oncor were forced to cut power for thousands of Texans during that week of frigid weather.
Since then, Vegas took over as CEO and ERCOT has experienced tight conditions but has never gone into such an emergency again.
“The changes that we’ve made to the ERCOT grid since Winter Storm Uri are having the effect that we wanted. The weatherization programs are having a significant effect. Having new tools in our toolbox like the firm fuel supply in case there’s a disruption in [natural] gas service. We’ve got more than 4,000 megawatts of power plants that have stored fuel on site,” Vegas explained. “We’re thinking about reliability 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That’s all that we focus on, and everything we’re doing is to try to keep that reliability where people expect it to be.”
