BRYAN, Texas — Bryan Texas Utilities is working with (The Electric Reliability Council of Texas) known as ERCOT. The organizations are informing residents about conserving energy.
ERCOT released a conservation appeal that is asking Texas residents and businesses to conserve energy between 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm.
ERCOT said that they do not expect any blackouts throughout the day. They released a complete statement to media outlets on July 10, to highlight several key details about the need to conserve energy.
"Conservation is a reliability tool ERCOT has deployed more than four dozen times since 2008 to manage grid operations successfully. This notification is issued when projected reserves may fall below 2300 MW for 30 minutes or more".
Meagan Brown, the Public Information Officer for Bryan Texas Utilities, said they had a meeting with ERCOT officials on July 11, and reached out to their customers to ensure they received the message.
“A lot of that is pushing the same messaging out to our customers, and so that they get that messaging so, they can do their part in conserving what they can,” said Brown.
According to Brown, BTU has repeatedly asked its customers to conserve energy. Brown said that air-conditioning units could use up a lot of energy, and Brown has requested that people bump up their thermostats by about four degrees, if possible.
Brown also shared that people should limit the use of machines, including their laundry machines, their dishwasher, and other machines
Brown said it’s unlikely that the Bryan/College Station area will see any blackouts and that they don’t expect people to conserve energy over several days excessively.
“Fortunately, ERCOT has said they don’t expect this to be a multi-day event; they expect the conditions to get a little better tomorrow through the rest of the week, so increased wind production and a few reduced temperatures,” said Brown.
ERCOT included several factors that they wanted to add to the conservation appeal.
Factors driving the need for this necessary action by customers:
• Record high electric demand. The heat wave that has settled on Texas and much of the central United States is driving increased electric use. Due to the heatwave, other grid operators are operating under similar conservative operations programs as ERCOT.
• Low wind. While solar power is generally reaching near-full generation capacity, wind generation is generating significantly less than what it developed in this period. Current projections show wind generation coming in less than 10 percent of its power.