With all eyes on the Texas power grid, Pablo Vegas, the head of ERCOT insisted Friday that there’s no reason to expect a repeat of February 2021 when more than four million homes were left in the dark.
“I want to let you know and reassure you that we are using every tool in our toolbox to make sure the grid is absolutely ready and prepared to deliver energy to all Texans throughout this weather event. The grid is better prepared than it has ever been before in particular as it relates to cold weather events like that is approaching,” said Vegas.
For now, the system operator isn’t calling for conservation.
But come Tuesday morning, its forecast shows demand narrowing at times within a few hundred megawatts of the available supply, narrowing again Tuesday night.
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“Tuesday morning, we're likely to set an all-time wintertime demand record,” said Rice University environmental engineering professor Daniel Cohan.
Cohan said tight conditions will come first with the arrival of the storm’s coldest temps and later, as wind and solar power drop off.
“They're pretty optimistic about how well the coal and gas plants are going to perform next week. That's not been the case the past few winter storms that we've had. We know maintenance steps have been done, and really remains to be seen whether those thermal power plants, many of them more than 30 years old, hold up as well as ERCOT expects them to,” said Cohan.
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In other words, Cohan said next week’s arctic blast will be a rare test of how far things have come since 2021, noting one significant difference, the 2024 freeze isn’t expected to dip as deep or last nearly as long.
“I think people don't realize that during Uri we were about a third short of supply meeting demand. And so I don't see really any scenario, at least that I could imagine where things would get anywhere near that level of severity in a storm like the one that's coming next week,” he said.
