SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Many of us were caught off guard when ERCOT, the agency that regulates Texas's electricity grid, said Tuesday it may need to enter emergency conditions. The announcement came just two months after the deadly February winter storm that left thousands of us without power for days.
It has many now wondering how the coming months will fare, especially with the outages from the winter storm still fresh in Texans' minds. We have not even hit peak summer temperatures and ERCOT is already issuing energy alerts.
ERCOT sent out a call for conservation due to what it referred to as a combination of factors, including weather, high demand and lower-energy capacity because of plant maintenance ahead of the summer season. Sounds really similar to what happened in February.
KENS 5 wanted to find out if outages could be our new normal. A Texas energy expert said not to worry; this is the system working like it should.
“The calling for conservation, that’s all in the protocols if the reserves get tight enough,” said Joshua Rhodes, a researcher with the Webber Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. “I mean, that is kind of boilerplate. That’s what they do. They push these conservation alerts out there. So it wasn’t being more conservative or it wasn’t being more proactive necessarily. This is just what happens when we get into these kinds of conditions.”
He also said the Texas grid is really built for summer, so we should not see any issues. CPS Energy said it continues to monitor the situation. The electricity provider also said in a statement our area has enough power to meet demand.
Of course, conservation of electricity is always appreciated.