Texas’ main electric grid operator is asking consumers to conserve power this afternoon between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. as high temperatures squeeze power generation capacity.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas asks customers to turn off unneeded lighting and other equipment and to hold off on running appliances such as washing machines until later in the evening.
“The ERCOT region is continuing to experience record high temperatures throughout the state, which is causing high electricity usage,” said Kent Saathoff, ERCOT’s vice president of system planning and operations. ”At this time, we expect to be tight over the peak hours today between 4-5 p.m., which means that significant generation outages could make us short of operating reserves.”
A large power plant capable of generating 600 megawatts of power went off line unexpectedly earlier this morning, ERCOT said, but the plant didn’t come back on line as quickly as hoped.
As of 5 p.m. the ERCOT system demand was 66,925 megawatts – above the all-time record of 65,776 MW that occurred Aug. 23, 2010. Peak usage usually occurs around 5 p.m. most days, so hitting this peak so early in the day is a bit surprising.
This is the third conservation warning ERCOT has called this summer, including a June 27 warning and another on July 14, when about 3,800 megawatts of power plant capacity went offline unexpectedly earlier in the day.
Texas is in the midst of an above-average summer, both in temperatures and a lack of rainfall.
If the daily operating reserves drop below pre-set targets, ERCOT will initiate emergency procedures, starting with drawing capacity from neighboring grids — if any power is available — and having industrial customers turn off equipment as part of a pre-approved plan to reduce demand.
ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark said that as of 5 p.m. ERCOT did not need to call on power from neighboring grids or ask industrial customers to cut-off usage.
Rolling blackouts, like those ERCOT faced in February when extreme cold knocked dozens of power generators offline, are a last resort taken to avoid system-wide failures.
Recommended conservation measures include:
- When at home, close blinds and drapes that get direct sun, set air conditioning thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, and use fans to cool the air.
- When away from home, set air conditioning thermostats to 85 degrees and turn all fans off before you leave. Block the sun by closing blinds or drapes on windows that will get direct sun.
- Do not use your dishwasher, laundry equipment, hair dryers, coffee makers, or other home appliances during the peak hours of 3 to 7 p.m.
- Avoid opening refrigerators or freezers more than necessary.
- Use microwaves for cooking instead of an electric range or oven.
- Set your pool pump to run in the early morning or evening instead of the afternoon.
What happens when all of Obama’s electric cars come online.
This should be easy in a conservative state like Texas.
Meanwhile our Governor is out shaking down his favorite 204 Sugar Daddies while the citizens who he is supposed to work for fend for themselves.
Good Luck! (as I get up to turn down my thermostat to 64 degrees)
Praise God, for The Tea Partying Right Wing GOP’ers – they are our USA saviors, to take our country back from these Black Muslim Communist Socialist Hindu Buddhists LIBBBBRRRRUUUUUULLLLLL Fascist anti-Americans of the Obama administration.
Pray to Praying Perry,
The Moses of Texas,
and he will part the Colorado, Trinity, Pecos, Rio Grande, Oyster Creek, Buffalo Bayou Rivers and make Texas all good and pure, for Praying Perry, The Moses of Texas, has made it known, throughout the known world of The Tea Partying Right Wing GOP’ers, that their god is with them, for they are one with their god and pure and good and no one else matters.
Halleluiahs for The Tea Partying Right Wing GOP’ers, for without them, their god would surely shun Texas, and the US of A.
Oh wait !
We need to obey your commie president Obama and our republican RINOS who put us in this position. Don’tcha just luv this kind of stuff. I want to thank all of you politicians that gave us this and all of you voters that elected them but not the voters that did not vote – they deserve nothing not even a gripe.
Thanks to ERCOT team , which supressed electric rates and incentivized retail energy companies at the cost to wholesale generators margin , no new builds in power generations are to come in next 3 years, we’d be short power in texas becuase of some really stupid dumb govt official
Looks like Blue Jay has already started drinking. I didn’t know those welfare checks and food stamps came in at the beginning of the month.
So, somebody explain to me again what the energy efficient appliance rebate program and all the new smart meters were supposed to accomplish? Something about “reducing electricity demand”.
ERCOTSUCKS
ERCOT pretty much operates with the powers that the legislative gives it and those that the PUC allows them to use. Can you explain how ERCOT provided incentives to electric retailers?
Government: Hands off my electricity!
BlueJay and BOB: You can save energy by turning off your computers since you don’t seem to be able to keep your comments on topic. Try a damp, cool cloth over your bald spots.
Naw, I think I will keep my A/C running for a while longer. I like the cool feeling of an ICE COLD recliner when I sit on it.
Can we please get a reason for why these plants are going down “unexpectedly”? This is the 3rd time.
There’s probably nothing illegal going on, but it has happened before (Enron in California) and always good to keep an eye on them.
What is anybody doing to prepare for this next year, 2012?
Or 2013?
Or 2014?
Hey, all you lefties out there. Better catch the bus home. ERCOT has asked you not to plug in your electric cars! Don’t worry, no one will steal those little wheels. They won’t look cool on someone’s 1989 Olds 98.
Now tell me, how are we supposed to power two million electric cars (like Obama wants) if we have to reduce consumption simply due to “summer” time?
You guys quickly turned a simple heatwave into a political soap box. Wow! Impressive.
There are 3 solutions to this problem. Less heat, more power, and/or less consumption of electricity. There’s not much we can do about the weather, so the first one’s out. We can add more capacity to the system through limited transfers from other systems, as in the article, or through power plant construction. Building a power plant takes years of planning, construction before it can start up, something that should have been thought up years ago, let’s say during the bush years. Furthermore, you don’t want to build to overcapacity for a heat wave (1 it would be inefficient during non heatwave times, 2 it would not be feasible). Finally there’s conservation. Asking for voluntary cuts is far better than suddenly cutting off power for minutes at a time throughout the area. If enough people turn off that tv no one is watching, turn off the bathroom light when you’re done, then the rolling black outs will not be necessary. The fact is, there is only a limited amount of power available at a time, if demand is going to exceed that, cuts must be made to prevent the whole system from failing. Simple as that.
Feed the homeless and put them on a tread mill to a generator.
I thought after all the temporary shut downs this winter due to the grids freezing and had not been serviced in years, we were told we would not have this problem this summer, because they will get everything fixed and running properly. I know there is a drought and extreme heat, but until we get some new power plants this is what Texas is going to face from now on. Our neighborhood experience a blackout last Thursday, and had “bumps” most of that afternoon. I am going to have to invest in some more surge protectors just so my appliances do take the hits with these “bumps” they are doing.
I’ll add that you really don’t want to politicize something like the power grid. Sad to say, most, if not all of our politicians would not know the least bit about running a power grid, and/or would use it for political gain.
I could swear I’m living in a 3rd world country.
They said at the beggining of summer they were gonna be prepared and there would be no issues. This is a joke, if I were the owner of an electric company I’d be spitting mad at my employees for not being able to capitalize on business
We are now living in a 3rd world country. I’ve lived in Texas all my life and I don’t remember this happening before. It must be a result of Hope & Change.
o.k. i’m doing my part. i’m going home early. just trying to help “)
I mean seriously, is this the first time electric companies have ever experienced a summer? SMH
Thank you Ken Lay! Rates are sky high, usage is sky high, production is down but profits are up!
And where do I buy my $45,000 electric car?
What happens when all of Obama’s electric cars come online
—————-
Depends. How many does he have? But suppose that the lion’s share of US drivers used an EV for most of their miles. We wouldn’t need to import any oil. We wouldn’t be exporting hundreds of billions of dollars every year for consumables. The grid would be supplying a/c’s during the day and charging EV’s at night…a much more balanced load profile than we have now. With the sale of more total energy, they’d have much more revenue to make grid upgrades (domestic construction w/ good jobs). The US might have the opportunity (if we don’t squander it again) to regain our status as the world’s leading automotive innovator, and possibly even a net technology exporter again.
Let Tricky Rick turn his AC off for a few hours. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
you suckers better pray with RP instead,
my t’stat is at 68
Won’t be long before there are so man people in Texas, the government will be passing out vouchers for water. Anyone in Washington considering this happening? It is just a matter of time.
Everyone see the article where the government of Texas STEALS money from the Lite-Up Texas contributions so they can balance their budget? GOOGLE IT. Did the story in the Dallas Morning News report say the theft amounted to about a billion dollars a year? This is OUR government in Texas. Everyone should read this story.
Olivia
I think the story you’re referring to says that there will be $1 billion unspent by the time the current two-year budget ends. I think that includes unspent funds from years past. Still pretty lame the way lawmakers in Texas will use funds collected for one thing and use it for another on a regular basis, however.
Tom:
I’ll take a stab at your question for ERCOTSUCKS (It doesn’t by the way). ERCOT has the habit of deploying reserves when prices spike (see this afternoon for example) leading to a big depression of the going rate. This bails out the REPs from getting large bills, but defeats the purpose of the scarcity pricing mechanism which should signal the need for new builds. The net result is that the REPs just ride on the variable market and don’t contract long – why should they? This problem was a major subject of last month’s PUC Generation Adequacy workshop. Loren also wrote a story about this about a month ago.
As alluded to above, no one is now building any significant capacity while ERCOT shows the need for new units after 2013. It takes about 2 1/2 years to build a big gas plant. What will happen to prices when there’s nothing left to turn on?
Fix the damn grid, fools, or PROTECT the BORDER (s)
NO!
What part of that do you not understand?
I will now go to cut my thermostat down and run my dryer just because you told me not too.
Fix the PROBLEM liberal democrats! Get off your rear and do something about it!
To all my admiring latent Tea Baggy Partying Latent Homosexual Log Cabin Republicans, AKA, the Political Right Wing Party of Their god, The Godly Party of Prying Preying Praying Perry – where “Eat Texas Crow” invitations are as of this moment being printed out fer youse Special People From Your gods’s special pillar o saintly top drawer top shelf white and pure right winged Tea Baggy Partying GOP’ers.
As a side note – plenty of Continental Airline barf bags will be distributed for the ones that finally have had enough of this carnival freak show.
RSVP is Required.
Enjoy !
If you experience a brown out.. thank a Greenie… or you could flatten his face with a 2 x 4 for the damage he’s doing to our lives… our Economy..
WE NEED NUKES! STOP THE GREENIE PUKES!
I read the on-line Chron.com beginning at 6:45AM today. This information was not listed until this afternoon. Why? Just asking….
You conservative Texans are such whiney crybabies. GO OUTSIDE AND TAKE A WALK. I lived in Australia for a decade which is HOTTER and I never have met so many overweight spoiled air-conditioned trash than here.
Speaking of making it a political matter. Since many of you yuppie conservatives want secession and revolution nonsense. This whole can’t take the heat deal goes well with that.
The Tea Baggy Partying L. H. Log Cabin Republicans, AKA, the Political Far To The Right Wing Party, The Godly Right Wing Party of Prying Preying Praying Perry, also known as “The Moses Of Texas,” where their vast multitudes are comprised of sinless pure as 24 KT gold, virgin right-wingers, as called by their god, are always correct, never wrong, never have sinned, never have lied, never have eaten chicken skins, never cheated on their IRS forms, their wives, or girlfriends or their hidden boyfriends, male lovers etc., have never ever ever called the present POTUS a ni _ ___er, and always claim that they are not racist, even though many recordings/data/emails (verified from WikiLeaks), from the president Cheney/Boy George regime – on down to their in lock-step white Anglo-Saxon superior minds AKA The Tea Baggy Partying L. H. Log Cabin Republicans, AKA, the Political Far To The Right Wing Party – The Tea Pee’s, per se, deny and deny and deny and deny (in denial?) that their racist gaggle of goose-stepping white Anglo-Saxons “have never, ever” entertained such thoughts.
And of course – “WE BELIEVE THEM!”
.
Bubba Euler
The conservation warning didn’t come out until just before 3.
GAPlatt:
That makes more sense. Thank you.
But of course I have follow-ups: How would it work if ERCOT didn’t call on reserves? And don’t the plants that they dispatch get a higher rate anyhow? And is this a significant change from past ERCOT practices?
Dear Mr. Steffy:
Will the entire state of Texas be completely blacked out by Labor Day at this rate? WHY DOESN’T SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!!!!?
Any thoughts?
Tom:
The problem isn’t the dispatch of the reserves per se, it’s how these plants are paid for the energy they subsequently produce. From what I understand, they get some money for signing up to supply the power and some more when they are dispatched. ERCOT only uses the latter amount to re-set the market clearing price, undercutting the price impact of using these inefficient units. Look at today’s market prices on the ERCOT website and note how the prices spike in the early afternoon and them fall off when the load peaks. That’s not the way supply/demand is supposed to work.
The problem is twofold: Investors see lower prices and become concerned that ERCOT can and will manipulate the market. Neither gives them a warm feeling about financing new capacity in TX.
GAPlatt
Sounds like ERCOT is a weird hybrid between a capacity market and an energy-only market.
Electric cars charge at night, where there is an over supply of electricity. But keep on being ignorant of the facts. They also only use as much power as a refrigerator not a central a/c.
Thanks for the hints.
I never set my a/c below 78 (when my husband is out of the house, I up it to 82), my mom taught me as a child not to hold the refigerator door open, I never leave light or appliances on, I cook with a pressure cooker or my slow cooker, and Texans aren’t supposed to be filling their pools this drought!