HOUSTON – Increased electric resources should keep the Texas power grid sufficiently supplied through the expected colder-than-normal winter season, officials for the state’s grid operator said Friday.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said the state has more generation capacity than it did in 2013 and that it doesn’t expect peak power demand to reach the same levels it did last winter, the 29th coldest Texas winter on record since 1895, according to the agency’s meteorologist.
The Texas power grid, which supplies electricity in most of the state, is expected to have more than 77,350 megawatts of generation capacity and peak demand could reach about 53,000 megawatts, ERCOT officials said in the agency’s final winter projection. One megawatt is enough to power 500 Texas homes in normal conditions.
Given the increased capacity from wind power sources, “we do not expect to see extreme resource scarcity in either winter or spring,” said Warren Lasher, ERCOT’s director of system planning, in a conference call with reporters on Friday.
He said much of the new generation capacity comes from wind power sources, both installed this year and accounted for in a new methodology of measuring available wind power. New wind resources will boost the grid’s capacity by 1,600 megawatts, Lasher said.
ERCOT said its capacity reserves in the winter’s peak could range from more than 16,000 to less than 1,200 megawatts. Plans for the worst-case scenario assumes a high level of power demand, generation outages and constraints on fuel supplies needed to fire up power plants, the agency said. In that scenario, the grid could see peak demand rise to more than 59,600 megawatts, beating the February 2011 record for demand by 2,000 megawatts.
ERCOT had warned state residents last winter to curb electricity use to avert rolling blackouts, power outages that hit the state in 2011. The grid experienced rotating outages briefly this month when two power plants went offline.
ERCOT meteorologist Chris Coleman said during the call this winter will be colder than normal, but not as cold as last winter. Weather in February, however, “may rival the extremes” of last February, Coleman said.
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