Texas power grid avoids emergency conditions Thursday night

DALLAS - The Electric Reliability Council of Texas says power grid conditions were tight again Thursday night but not as tight as Wednesday night when supply levels dropped to critical levels.

We now know more about why ERCOT has been struggling to meet high demand during this record September heat.

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Emergency conditions were not activated on Thursday, but many of the same issues that led to supply and demand problems on Wednesday were present again on Thursday.

Thankfully, there was enough of a cushion between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. that we avoided emergency conditions.                     

ERCOT's reserve power throughout Thursday evening briefly dropped to 3,700 megawatts. Wednesday night, we were dropping into the low 2,000s and staying there.

It was not that there was not enough power Wednesday but rather they could not get the power to where it was needed.

ERCOT finally confirmed that in addition to some of the stressors we've seen on the system all summer long, there were also not enough transmission resources to get power from South Texas out to the rest of the grid.    

Energy Analyst Doug Lewin points out that around that time wind generation appeared to inexplicably drop, despite the wind itself not dying down.

The former head of ERCOT Brad Jones told Bloomberg that he believes available wind power from South Texas could not get up to North Texas.

That means there was power that could have been used and delivered where it needed to go, but there aren't transmission lines available to deliver it all.

Thursday marked the tenth time in the last four weeks that ERCOT has asked Texans to cut back on electricity use.

Wednesday night was the first time we entered emergency conditions.

ERCOT says the conservation requests are working, but it's not clear if there's data to back that up especially when it has become almost routine.

Ed Hirs is an expert in energy economics at the University of Houston.

"The coal plants average 50 years in age. The gas plants average 30 years in age, and we've been running them pretty regularly darn near flat out since the end of May," he said. "If all the cars around Dallas, we're 30 years in age on the highway, we would have a mess trying to get from here to there."

Based on average temperatures, two of the four hottest summers on record came back-to-back this year and last year. And before that, there was the historic 2021 winter storm. 

"Keep in mind that ERCOT makes all of its forward-looking projections based on past events," Hirs said. "They look back over the last 10 to 15-20 years of averages, and it's quite clear the weather is becoming more volatile. You know, cold or cold, hot or hot, and ERCOT hasn't adjusted to this."

Hirs says the bigger problem comes down to simple supply issues resulting from the state not incentivizing the building of power plants to keep up with the growing population as well as weather extremes. 

"If we had gone out and built 10 new power plants, we would have just guaranteed that the prices stayed down," Hirs said. "These guys who work back and forth with Wall Street are a lot smarter than that."

Hirs says generators have a perverse incentive. They make more money when there is less power. 

"And so they're really excited to see these 5,000 megawatt-hour prices like we hit last night and like we've hit many times over the summer," he said. "That's a hundred times the price of electricity in California during their solar runoff at the end of the day. Being the energy capital of the world, Texas can do much better than we're doing."

As for the transmission issues, ERCOT says its board recently approved a project aimed at addressing the congestion. It says it's working on near-term fixes as well.

ERCOT declined to do interviews on Thursday.

ERCOT says It'll probably be tight again Friday night, so it wants people to stay tuned.