Texas came uncomfortably close to rolling blackouts this month, the head of the state’s electric grid said Thursday, when demand for power pushed the system to the brink of requiring forced outages to keep it from failing.
And unless the companies that provide electricity to the grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas change their approaches to meeting the state’s rapidly increasing demand for power, such scenarios may become more common.
In the past few weeks, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said, emergency conditions were headed off only by robust responses to requests for Texans to conserve.
“The impact of those calls and the impact of response for Texans has been nothing short of tremendous,” he told ERCOT’s board of directors. “We have seen each of the days that we have made those calls, they have made a material and meaningful impact on the energy demand during that day, and contributed … to us being able to get through a tight period of operations without having to go into emergency operations.”
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He was referring to a string of tight supply days at the end of the month, when a mix of record heat, declines in wind generation and struggling coal- and gas-fired plants kept the grid teetering near failure. Since an Aug. 17 grid scare, ERCOT has called eight conservation notices in two weeks.
Vegas didn’t present data regarding how much energy was saved by conservation, but he said the state’s overall load demands this summer have shot up 7%. That’s after two decades of more predictable growth of about 1% a year.
What happened?
The state’s population boom and rapidly increasing summer temperatures are creating what’s becoming an untenable situation for the state’s stand-alone power grid. ERCOT manages the flow of electricity for about 90% of Texas that isn’t interconnected to the vast regional grids that cross state lines.
“There’s really three primary variables that kind of drive our reliability on any given day,” Vegas said.
Those are Texans’ demand for power, the amount of so-called dispatchable power coming from gas- and coal-fired plants, and the performance of more unpredictable renewable sources such as wind and solar power.
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“When you have issues with all three of them, you can have very tight conditions,” Vegas said. “And so what we’ve been experiencing throughout the summer has been some combinations of those three.”
While earlier conservation requests were partly in response to record heat, the latest came despite temperatures statewide being as much as 10 degrees cooler. The reasons: gas- and coal-fired plants facing unexpected outages at nearly twice the rate the grid is prepared to handle and lower wind generation than ERCOT had forecast.
Amid record heat during July and August, Texans have been using record amounts of power to keep homes and businesses cool -- also outstripping ERCOT's forecasts. During the daytime, that isn’t much of a problem thanks to the state’s major expansion of solar energy, which provided a needed cushion.
But when the sun goes down, it puts Texas in a precarious position when wind and thermal generating sources aren’t performing.
RELATED: ERCOT issues another conservation notice as gas and coal generation continues to lag expectations
In the past, Vegas said, the timetable of new power needs was in line with the development of facilities that would handle those added loads. But new demands — from cryptocurrency miners to increases in use by vast data servers — are coming online within one to two years. So, along with population growth and record heat, the grid increasingly is being outrun.
Challenging balance
Vegas reiterated concerns he shared with municipality-operated power companies in July that the grid is increasingly out of the necessary balance to meet current needs. It is made up of power companies across the state, many of which have aging gas- and coal-fired plants prone to mechanical issues. And many are working to replace those with renewable sources and batteries that can store their output for use when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.
Vegas said that while solar and battery storage is growing rapidly, traditional dispatchable power plants — which can be turned on and off — aren’t being proposed at the same rate.
RELATED: Without wind and solar power, ERCOT CEO says, this summer's grid story could be much different
“You need to have that balance because the growth and demand is firm,” he said. “It needs to be served, whether it’s extreme heat or extreme cold, and you cannot have gaps and the ability to serve that demand going forward.”
But Vegas and some of the board members shared concerns over pending federal regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions and other harmful pollutants that come from coal- and gas-fired plants.
Those regulations could have a “significant material effect on the coal- and gas-generation fleet serving Texas,” Vegas said.
“Over half of our fleet today is these types of plants, and these rules could take a substantial amount of that offline within a shortened period,” said Bill Flores, the board’s chair. “And there’s no replacement that provides reliable and cost-effective power.”
With those proposed regulations hanging overhead, board members also wondered how the regulatory situation may impede the gas-powered plants they’re trying to encourage — potentially with a loan program — to open in the state.
Batteries, conservation
Carrie Bivens, ERCOT’s independent market monitor with Potomac Economics, said solar and battery storage were the more economical investments for those participating in the state’s wholesale power market.
“I expect to see more natural gas built,” she said, but “regulatory uncertainty” is likely slowing those developments.
Outside of adding generation to the state, Vegas said, ERCOT is beginning to work with Texas A&M University to research the effectiveness of demand response programs — such as the one CPS Energy uses to tap into customers' thermostats to reduce demand during periods of tight supply — and the impacts of improved energy efficiency.
CONSERVATION AT CPS: Does CPS taking over your thermostat really save that much power?
“This is not just a story about how we build more generation,” Vegas said. “This is a discussion about: How do we address the reliability needs of the grid?”
Grid and energy experts across Texas in the past month have advocated for expanding demand response programs and improving energy efficiency of homes and commercial buildings. Both, they say, would reduce demand loads in less time that it takes to build a new plant.
Others have called for a new look at the possibility of connecting the ERCOT grid to those outside the state to provide a backup during supply shortages such as those Texas has experienced in the past few weeks.
“This is, I think, kind of a wake-up call to all of us to let us know, the future is not clear and how we get there is not clear, and we have a lot of work to do,” Flores said.
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