What to Know
- As of Tuesday morning, ERCOT has not issued any further conservation alerts for this week.
- Conservation efforts Monday led to a noticeable drop in usage.
- "Extreme hot weather" and temperatures above 103 degrees are expected in parts of Texas Wednesday through Sunday, ERCOT says.
Texans did their part to help Monday, answering the call to conserve power.
Between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., Texas was under a “conservation alert” issued by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which asked customers to voluntarily reduce electric use during the six-hour time frame.
Sacrificing some energy likely helped dodge major power issues even as electricity demand may have again hit a new record.
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Just before 5 p.m., ERCOT’s online tracker shows demand surpassed the previous record; if the agency confirms Monday’s demand hit a new record, it would be the seventh time this year it's happened.
An ERCOT spokesperson told NBC 5 that ERCOT saw a noticeable drop in power usage at the time the conservation alert took effect, a drop of 500 megawatts of power shed in just four minutes, enough power to keep the lights on in 100,000 homes.
ERCOT’s “conservation alert” is one step above normal conditions and one step below “energy emergency level 1,” when conservation is critical.
For comparison, the February 2021 winter storm became an “energy emergency level 3,” the highest level of emergency operations.
ERCOT said the need for conservation was driven by record-high electricity demand during the ongoing heat wave and lower-than-expected wind generation.
Dr. Wei-Jen Lee is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington.
“The renewable energy is necessary but unfortunately, renewable energy output sometimes is out of our control,” said Lee.
St. Clair Newbern IV, and energy broker and CEO at Live Energy Inc., said another big factor that is driving the demand for electricity is the record number of people and businesses moving to Texas.
"We're growing as a state, we have lots of businesses and residential consumers that are entering the market. And so at the same time, as we're trying to deploy wind and solar, these are intermittent resources," he said. "The only way that we can balance the grid is for people and businesses to be responsive, when we're at our very highest demand days."
Newbern said Monday was potentially the highest electricity demand Texas had ever seen in its history.
"ERCOT has to make a plan every day, every week and every month. And they know that on very hot days like today, the wind is not going to be as be there like it would be on another day, like in the spring. So they make plans for that and they've accounted for all that," he said. "The reality is that we've just gotten more demand than we've ever seen in the state of Texas because of all the new people that are here all the new businesses that are here. And it's just a matter of everyone doing their part. If we all do our part then we will be able to get through it without any issue."
TEXAS POWER GRID
The worst of the heat wave may lie ahead.
Monday evening, shortly before the “conservation alert” was set to expire, ERCOT issued an OCN (Operating Condition Notice) that put the north-central and south-central areas of Texas on notice for “extreme hot weather with forecasted temperatures be above 103 degrees” from Wednesday until Sunday. According to ERCOT, an OCN is "the first of four levels of communication issued by ERCOT in anticipation of a possible Emergency Condition."
Overnight Monday and into Tuesday, skylines across North Texas darkened. Downtown buildings in Dallas and Fort Worth turned off the lights, in addition to Reunion Tower and Globe Life Field.
