AUSTIN, Texas — The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has not issued an energy emergency alert (EEA) this week as freezing weather blankets the state and the demand for power is driving higher than any other winter on record.
“You had low thermal power plant outages. You had decent to very good wind depending on the time of the event. You're looking at solar and storage. So this is where, you know, it's a system – it's all kind of working together,” said Doug Lewin, founder of Stoic Energy Consulting.
Lewin said weatherization mandated by the state since a deadly February 2021 winter storm likely helped keep power plants running.
However, he warns that the state still isn’t ready for another round of snow and single-digit temperatures like in 2021 because homes need more efficiency, such as using heat pumps.
“It's the same technology as your refrigerator. What a heat pump does is it's just moving heat. As cold as it is outside right now, a heat pump can actually get heat out of the air and bring it into your home,” Lewin said.
State filings show some people using electric heat instead of heat pumps during the February 2021 storm used nearly doubled the amount of energy compared to a 100-degree day.
The Inflation Reduction Act set aside money to help people make weatherization and efficiency upgrades such as heat pumps.
“What you would want to ask for is a cold-weather-rated, high-efficiency heat pump,” Lewin said.
Leading into this week’s storm, ERCOT forecasted demand to reach more than 87,000 megawatts, which would make it more than the all-time peak set in August 2023. On Tuesday, the new record was set at more than 78,000 megawatts.
“If you're going to miss [the forecasted demand], you'd rather miss high than miss low. However, there are consequences to missing on the high side too – namely that there is a day-ahead market and that day-ahead market is at least influenced by the projections that ERCOT puts out. It was $1,000/megawatt hour on Monday and $2,000/megawatt hour on Tuesday, so that's a lot of money,” Lewin said.
The KVUE Defenders emailed ERCOT asking about its grid management Monday and Tuesday morning.
“ERCOT continues a reliability-first approach to grid operations. Conservation efforts by Texas residents and businesses, along with additional grid reliability tools, helped us get through record-breaking peak times today and yesterday morning,” ERCOT's communications team wrote.