As we head into a cold week, NBC 5 wanted to examine the ERCOT grid conditions, and many of us still remember the huge power outage two years ago.
The state's main energy grid operator and lawmakers required new measures for power plants after the 2021 catastrophe when 4.5 million homes went without power and people died from the elements.
Now, power plants and transmission operators are required to prepare for cold weather. We spoke to ERCOT leaders several times this summer and fall about their preparations.
“What we’re finding is a very receptive and active community that’s complying with those expectations," Pablo Vegas, CEO of ERCOT, said in an earlier interview.
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"The entire participant group in the electric grid wants to be successful. They want to deliver power when it’s needed. And now with this inspection program there’s a lot more clarity of what’s expected.”
The good news is that on Tuesday, according to the ERCOT data online, the power demand was far below the supply available. Grid operators forecast that will be the case for the rest of the week. The most vulnerable time for power outages will be around 8 a.m. when people wake up and turn on their appliances, but solar power generators are not fully operational.
A recent report details the chance of an outage as we head into January. ERCOT forecasters predict that there's almost a seven percent chance they'll need a controlled outage every day. If we get a cold snap like last winter, that chance increases to almost seventeen percent.
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Those predictions increased after ERCOT leaders could not convince power companies to reboot old power plants for backup energy in early December.
That, and Texas's mostly stand-alone grid, still worries some this fall, like Daniel Cohan, an environmental engineering professor at Rice University.
"The state has taken a number of steps to make things better than it was then but we’re still on an isolated grid with many of the same problems in 2021," said Cohan.
So watchdogs advise families to have supplies for a power outage just in case. The winter is much safer than the summer for grid conditions, but a freak event can always happen.
