Cold weather causes surge in demand on Texas’ electric grid

Posted Monday, Jan. 06, 2014

By Bill Hanna and Jim Fuquay

billhanna@star-telegram.com, jfuquay@star-telegram.com

FORT WORTH As the Arctic air settled in across North Texas Monday morning, temperatures plunged into the teens, wind chills dropped to the single digits and energy consumption soared across Texas.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the electric grid in most of Texas, briefly issued an Energy Emergency Alert 2 early Monday morning, the last step before rotating power outages would be implemented. ERCOT canceled the warning about possible outages shortly after 9:30 a.m.

But the loss of just one more large power plant could have pushed the grid over the edge, Dan Woodfin, ERCOT director of system operations, told reporters on a conference call. The grid lost two big power plants to weather-related problems and some others to other problems, totaling about 3,700 megawatts of power, Woodfin said.

During that time, the state imported about 800 megawatts from the nation’s eastern power grid, and another 180 megawatts from Mexico. A megawatt is roughly enough to supply about 200 Texas homes during a period of peak electricity use, although demand in Texas peaks during the summer as air conditioners fire up.

For about an hour during the emergency alert period, wholesale power prices hit the state’s regulatory ceiling of $5,000 per megawatt-hour, Woodfin said. That’s about 100 times the $50 per megawatt-hour price generally seen.

For more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/06/5463926/cold-weather-causes-surge-in-demand.html#storylink=cpy