Focus at Four: ERCOT warns of tight grid conditions from now until Thursday evening
BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – ERCOT has recently asked power generators to delay or cancel planned outages ahead of high temperatures this week.
In some places, it’s forecasted to get to 90°.
Hugh Daigle, a professor at the University of Texas with the Cockrell School of Engineering, said the planned outages are part of a large, complicated system.
“It’s kind of like a fancy car. There are certain moving parts that just need to be serviced regularly to prevent a catastrophic outage. So you’d rather be doing that maintenance during the times of the year when you think you’re going to have less demand than trying to do them or deal with an emergency, say, on a really hot day in August,” he said.
Since April is often a mild month, it’s usually a good time to do these planned outages, but there are anomalies.
“Back in 2006, there actually were rolling blackouts in April because of anomalously hot weather. It can happen and you have to be careful when you’re looking at the resource averages to make sure that you’re going to have enough electricity generation available,” he said.
Reserve capacity deficiency is from 4 p.m. Tuesday to midnight on Thursday. While it’s possible ERCOT will ask customers to conserve during that time, Daigle says it’s unlikely.
“I was looking at the ERCOT dashboard just now and the conditions could be a little tight around 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. on Thursday. But when I say tight, the peak demand that we’re expecting is around 61 gigawatts, which sounds like a lot. But if you look back to last August or September when we were hitting records, you know that was mid 80s gigawatts. So we’re well below that,” he said.
To watch the full interview, click on the video player above.
