Texans did their part to help Monday, answering the call to conserve power.
From 2-8 p.m., Texas was under a “conservation alert” issued by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which asked customers to voluntarily reduce electric use during the six-hour time frame.
Sacrificing some energy, likely helped dodge major power issues.
Demand may have hit a new record, again.
Just before 5 p.m., ERCOT’s online tracker shows demand surpassed the previous record set on Jan. 8.
If the agency confirms Monday’s demand hit a new record, it would be the seventh time this year it’s happened.
An ERCOT spokesperson told NBC 5 that ERCOT saw a noticeable drop in power usage at the time the conservation alert took effect, a drop of 500 megawatts of power shed in just four minutes, enough power to keep the lights on in 100,000 homes.
ERCOT’s “conservation alert” is one step above normal conditions and one step below “energy emergency level 1”, when conservation is critical.
For comparison, the February 2021 winter storm became an “energy emergency level 3”, the highest level of emergency operations.
Driving record-high electric demand, ERCOTS says, are unseasonably hot weather and low wind.
Dr. Wei-Jen Lee is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at UTA.
“The renewable energy is necessary but unfortunately, renewable energy output sometimes is out of our control,” said Dr. Lee.
The worst of the heatwave may lie ahead.
Monday evening, shortly before the “conservation alert” was set to expire, ERCOT put the north-central and south-central areas of Texas on notice for “extreme hot weather with forecasted temperatures be above 103 degrees” from Wednesday until Sunday.
