Icing could cause local power outages if branches fall onto lines, ERCOT’s CEO said, “but the electric grid is going to be performing reliably.”
DALLAS — In what will be a significant test of the Texas electric grid’s stability, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said there is plenty of power for the demand when snow and wintry precipitation start falling on Thursday.
“The power is not going to go out because we don’t have enough supply to meet demand for this week. We’ve got plenty of power for the demand and for the cold weather that’s coming. So, the grid’s gonna be running stably,” Pablo Vegas told WFAA on Tuesday afternoon.
Still, Vegas said, there could be local outages in some areas where vegetation has not been cut away from utility lines by local providers like ONCOR.
“What people are going to have to keep an eye out for is the potential for local utility outages that could be caused,” Vegas explained. “If there’s ice that gets into trees or ice that gets onto power lines and disrupts some of that local infrastructure that could be a cause of power outages that folks could see.”
“Go either to your local utility company’s website or go to the public utilities. It’s puc.texas.gov right on the front page. It has a storm tracker and an outage map, and you can see and get access to where you need to go to report outages and get information about outages,” he added.
Unlike Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 which blanketed the entire state and led to the deadly power outages, this week’s polar vortex is only forecast to drop wintry precipitation in parts of North Texas, West Texas and the Panhandle.
That means ERCOT could draw on electric utilities from other parts of the state that are unaffected, like the Gulf Coast or South Texas if any power generation plants were to break down in North or West Texas.
At ERCOT’s headquarters in Austin, the staff is pulling sleeping cots out of storage areas, Vegas said, plans for extra food are being made and employees are preparing to work longer shifts beginning Wednesday night.
But one of the failures of the system in 2021, which led to the extended power outages that Texans faced, was electric generating plants that were not weatherized for extreme cold conditions.
State leaders, the legislature, and the Public Utility Commission ordered these facilities to prepare their facilities to operate not just in extreme heat but also now in extreme cold.
“We’ve already inspected upwards of 160 power plants and transmission facilities. We’ll get to nearly 170 more this month, and we’ll continue through February. We try to do at least a third of all the power plants in the State of Texas during each winter cycle, and we usually do more than that,” Vegas said. “The power generators have been doing all of their preparation and work that they needed to do to be ready for running in the winter, and so we expect their facilities to be running well.”
Even with winter weather approaching Texas, some electric generating stations will not be operating.
Less than 10% of the total electrical generating capacity in Texas is offline and unavailable.
“That’s for, you know, breakages, maintenance things like that typically not planned items, because, as we come into a weather event, we coordinate early to make sure that everyone has everything running that can be running. But if something’s in a long-term repair cycle. Then, you know, it won’t be performing,” Vegas said.
Natural gas-powered generating plants make up most of the capacity in Texas. But renewables such as wind and solar have been crucial in recent years as the state’s population continues to expand.
Vegas said ERCOT is going to rely on both to sustain the demand through the week.
“Solar, on Thursday and Friday, is going to be a little bit muted because of the cloud cover and the precipitation, but it’s still going to be a meaningful part of the mix,” Vegas explained. “Wind will perform in subfreezing weather. But when it gets far, far below that, that’s when you start to see issues with icing and the performance of windmills. We’re not expecting those kinds of issues during this weather event, and we’re expecting to see some good performance from them.”