Texas Asked to Conserve Energy After Power Plant Outages

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Texans are being asked to conserve electricity after a high number of fossil fuel plants unexpectedly went offline even as the intense summer heat ebbs.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator, called for conservation from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Central on Tuesday because of a “high level of unexpected” outages at fossil fuel generators. The supply drop comes on a day when wind power is low, typical for this time in August in West Texas. Failure to shore up additional supplies, such as through conservation, could lead Ercot to declare an emergency.

Texas’s challenge highlights a test power grids across the country increasingly face: fossil fuel generators need to step up more to keep the grid stable when demand is high and renewables are low.

More than 11 gigawatts of supply was reported offline this afternoon in Texas, a 72% jump from a day earlier, according to Ercot data compiled by Arcus Power’s Nrgstream market data service. A large chunk of that is coming from unplanned outages at thermal plants, which include fossil fuel and nuclear generators, Ercot data show. Availability is expected at a high of 65.2 gigawatts this evening, 4% lower than Monday’s high around 7 p.m. Nuclear generation has been steady, according to Ercot website.

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Texas Power Supply Plummets | Ercot issued a conservation plea after fossil fuel generators went offline

The outages were so unexpected that power prices for Tuesday evening peaked at $449.50 a megawatt-hour in the day-ahead market and, factoring in for lower supply, jumped to more than $2,500 for the following evening.

Tight conditions on the Texas grid are surprising because the intense heat seen this past weekend has eased off a bit. The high in Dallas will be 99F (37C) Tuesday, down from 109F on Aug. 26, according to AccuWeather.com. Power usage in the state is expected to peak at almost 75 gigawatts, 11% lower than the all-time high of 85.4 gigawatts set on Aug. 10. Texans weren’t asked to conserve on that record-breaking day.

This is the first summer that Texas has heavily relied on wind and solar — intermittent supplies by nature — to meet record demand, and for the most part it’s been smooth. But the August wind doldrums have interrupted the flow of strong afternoon solar power giving way to a ramp up in wind around sunset.