On Wednesday, the state’s power grid was hovering near a historic record.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the agency that manages the power grid, said demand for electricity could soon top 80,000 megawatts for the first time ever which would exceed even the worst-case scenario ERCOT envisioned in its most extreme forecasts prior to the start of the summer.
ERCOT’s online grid tracker showed that demand was just 22 megawatts shy of the 80,000-megawatt mark at mid-afternoon.
So far, the grid has been up to the test.
Power industry sources told NBC 5 they do not anticipate any problems, barring any unexpected failures at a large number of power plants.
To put the 80,000-megawatt number into perspective, that’s more power than California and New York state are expected to consume Wednesday afternoon — combined.
California’s peak demand is expected to hit about 40,000 megawatts and New York state about 30,000 megawatts this afternoon, according to each state’s real-time grid tracking information posted online.
ERCOT’s seasonal forecast predicted the state would not top 77,000 megawatts this summer even in the most extreme weather — so 80,000 megawatts is a number not expected by the experts. But this has been a summer of soaring heat and shattering power records. Wednesday could be the 11th time this year that Texas will set a new all-time record for consuming electricity.
ERCOT interim CEO Brad Jones said Wednesday in an interview with NBC News that his team is preparing for the possibility that this summer could top 2011, the hottest on record.
“We are approaching 2011 temperatures now and we are approaching a 2011 summer and the grid is holding together and I have high confidence that it will continue to do so throughout the summer,” Jones said.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation has said Texas is at generally at greater risk of rolling blackouts if the state would have a prolonged heat wave, and days with low supplies of wind generation combined with a high number of outages at traditional power plants, particularly in the early evening hours when solar power is no longer available.
That’s a trifecta of problems ERCOT is working to avoid and so far those efforts have been successful.
On Wednesday the grid was holding strong with coal, gas, and nuclear plants turning out massive amounts of power while the state was also getting help from almost 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy, with ample supplies of wind and sun.
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