Texas Likely to Face Energy Emergency Alerts This Summer as Power Demand Soars: ERCOT

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas on May 8 released its seasonal assessment report for the upcoming summer, which forecasts a peak demand of about 74,850 megawatts, which is 1,300 megawatts higher than the all-time record set last July. The grid operator identified a potential need for an energy emergency alert status, in order to maintain system reliability, despite an increase in the total available resource capacity.

Total resource capacity for the upcoming summer is expected to be nearly 78,930 megawatts, slightly higher than the 78,150 megawatts forecast in the preliminary report released in March. The grid operator attributes the growth to the return of a 365-megawatt gas-fired unit, higher output from units that are undergoing upgrades, and an increase in the amount of DC tie imports that is now based on what is expected during emergencies. Based on the resource updates, ERCOT said that the planning reserve margin for this summer rose to 8.6 percent, from a historic low of 7.4 percent.

Declaring an alert enables the grid operator to utilize resources that are only available during scarcity conditions. These include demand response, additional generation or imports from neighboring regions, voluntary calls for conservation, or resources that are usually set aside as operating reserves.

ERCOT also released an updated capacity, demand, and reserves report, which expects higher planning reserve margins between 2020 and 2023, due largely to a growth in potential wind and solar projects that are currently in the interconnection queue.  Since December, ERCOT has approved about 730 megawatts of installed wind and solar capacity for commercial operations, with summer peak capacity contributions of 330 megawatts and 140 megawatts of distributed solar units with a combined capacity contribution of 110 megawatts. Planned resources that became eligible for inclusion in this report total 5,640 megawatts of installed capacity by 2023, including 520 megawatts of battery storage.