A power grid system serving nearly 30 million Americans could again approach failure this summer, a local utility executive told the San Antonio Express-News. [emphasis, links added]
Rudy Garza, CEO of the San Antonio-owned utility company CPS Energy, anticipates that Texans will elevate power demand on the state’s grid system above and beyond last year’s record numbers, according to the Express-News.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s power system manager, had to issue several energy rationing alerts last summer as the state’s grid nearly faltered, and those conservation appeals are likely to be made again throughout this summer.
“I have learned in this business that it’s hard to make guarantees on anything,” Garza told the outlet. “If we lose a big nuclear unit, for instance, in the middle of a peak season, that could be enough to throw the grid off into some level of emergency. All we can do is prepare and keep our plants going.”
Garza predicts that Texans will exceed 100,000 megawatts of demand this summer, a level of power use that would be more than 15,000 megawatts greater than last summer’s record-setting demand, according to the Express-News.
Major factors driving demand in Texas include a growing population, a hot economy, cryptocurrency mining operations, and new power-hungry data centers.
“We’re building houses in every direction,” Garza told the Express-News. “We’ve seen an influx of some really large users coming into Texas, but they’re not driving the entirety of it. The state just continues to grow.”
Texas produces the most energy from wind and solar of any state in the country, according to Texas Monthly.
This leaves the ERCOT grid vulnerable to supply shortfalls in specific circumstances, especially the late afternoon and early evening hours of hot summer days with little or no wind blowing, according to the Express-News.
In those circumstances, power generation tails off right when Texans are driving up demand by cranking up their air conditioners and other appliances to stay cool in their homes, according to the Express-News.
To compensate for lost wind capacity in those situations, operators turn to older coal- and natural-gas-fired generation facilities to avoid blackouts.
A similar situation played out in the summer of 2023 when a prolonged heat wave pushed the grid to the brink and prompted ERCOT — which oversees the flow of power to approximately 27 million customers — to briefly issue an emergency notice on Sept. 6, according to the Express-News.
ERCOT put out a record [total] of 11 conservation appeals last summer, and the North American Energy Reliability Corporation (NERC) — an organization that monitors grid conditions in the U.S. — flagged ERCOT in a recently published outlook report for facing “elevated” blackout risks this summer if weather conditions are stronger than normal.
Source: Climatechangedispatch.com
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