ERCOT is asking Texans to voluntarily conserve electricity Wednesday afternoon due to a projected reserve capacity shortage that may lead to an energy emergency.
In an operational message issued late Wednesday morning, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the agency that manages the state’s power grid, asked the public news media to share a request that Texans voluntarily conserve energy between the hours of 2 p.m. and 9 p.m.
ERCOT said in a subsequent operational message that they are issuing a Watch for a projected reserve capacity shortage with no market solution available which puts them at risk for an Energy Emergency Event.
Currently, no system-wide outages are expected.
During an Energy Emergency Event controlled outages are possible should available supply not be sufficient to meet the demand and to prevent any uncontrolled system-wide outage. Read more about ERCOT’s warning system here.
On Sunday, ERCOT asked Texans to conserve power on Monday afternoon due to a projected shortage. ERCOT said later that afternoon that Texans responded and shed 500MW of demand during the conservation period.
On Monday night, ERCOT issued a notice that extremely hot weather this week could lead to further calls for conservation and necessary action to protect the grid.
