Texas Power Grid Operator Urges Power Conservation During Heat Wave

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The Texas power grid operator urged homes and businesses to conserve electricity on Tuesday evening to prevent power reserves from falling short as consumers crank up their air conditioners to escape the first heat wave of the summer season.

Power prices for Tuesday topped $2,500 per megawatt hour (MWh) in the state’s day-ahead market on expectations that demand would reach record levels later in the day, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

ERCOT operates the grid for more than 26 million customers representing about 90% of the state’s power load.

The grid operator issued a “Watch” for what it called a “projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution available for Tuesday” from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. local time, which could push ERCOT to take more actions to maintain reliability.

Although controlled outages are one of the most extreme actions a grid operator could take to maintain reliability, ERCOT said “controlled outages are not needed at this time.”

Extreme weather is a reminder of the 2021 February freeze that left millions of Texans without power, water and heat for days during a deadly storm as ERCOT scrambled to prevent a grid collapse after an unusually large amount of generation shut.

AccuWeather forecast temperatures in Houston, the biggest city in Texas, will hit 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday. That is up from a forecast of 101 F (38.3 C) earlier in the day and compares with a normal high of 93 F (33.9) for this time of year.

ERCOT forecast power use would reach 81,348 megawatts (MW) on Tuesday before slipping to 80,991 MW on Wednesday.

Tuesday’s high, which is a little below a forecast earlier in the day, would still top the grid’s current record peak of 80,148 MW on July 20, 2022.

Day-ahead power prices for Tuesday settled around $2,500 per MWh at 5 p.m. local time in several zones, including Houston and Dallas, according to the ERCOT website.

That compares with next-day prices at the ERCOT North Hub EL-PK-ERTN-SNL, which includes Dallas, that traded for $37 per MWh for the peak hours during the day on Monday, the U.S. Juneteenth holiday.

(Reporting by Seher Dareen and Brijesh Patel in Bengaluru and Scott DiSavino in New York; Editing by Kim Coghill, Will Dunham and Mark Potter)