HOUSTON — The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is expecting tight grid conditions again Wednesday but is not asking for energy conservation at this time, according to a release.
On Tuesday, ERCOT asked consumers and businesses to reduce electricity use in order to avoid what they called "emergency conditions." The request ended about 8:45 p.m.
For now, ERCOT officials are monitoring possible risks in the Rio Grande Valley spurred by the forced outage of a generating unit in the area.
ERCOT reports approximately 33,000 MW of generation is currently out of service for maintenance.
They say conditions could tighten again due to the large number of generators out of service for planned and forced maintenance combined with low wind and solar output, according to ERCOT Vice President of Grid Planning and Operations Woody Rickerson.
In the release, ERCOT explained tight conditions are not always a direct result of high demand on the electric system.
Electrical demand in the spring and fall may be relatively low, but there are typically a large number of generators that are out of service for scheduled maintenance.
As a result, there is less overall generation capacity available to serve electricity demand.
Moreover, officials said the weather tends to fluctuate more during the spring and fall, resulting in a significant amount of variability on the electric system due to changing demand and renewable output.
CenterPoint Energy releases statement:
CenterPoint Energy released a statement Wednesday afternoon reassuring its customers it is closely monitoring ERCOT activity following the conservation alert.
"According to ERCOT, customer demand for electricity came close to the amount of power generation available yesterday afternoon. As a result, ERCOT issued a conservation alert yesterday at approximately 4:30 p.m. CT. CenterPoint Energy does not generate electricity itself, so any shortage of electrical power capacity from the grid is not something that the company controls.
'We want to thank our customers across our service territory for responding to ERCOT’s request for conservation,' said Kenny Mercado, CenterPoint Energy’s Executive Vice President, Electric Utility. 'When power generation drops, conservation is critical to protect the reliability of the electric system and preventing an uncontrolled system-wide outage.'
ERCOT is the independent system operator for the region and manages the flow of electric power to most of Texas and more than 26 million Texas customers. CenterPoint Energy is an investor-owned electric utility and a member of ERCOT. The company manages the distribution and transmission of electricity to its approximately 2.6 million customers across the greater Houston area and surrounding communities.
As required, CenterPoint Energy will continue to follow ERCOT’s directives as the state faces high power demand and power plants being voluntarily shut down for maintenance issues.
'Our systems are operating normally. We will continue to monitor the electric grid and changing weather conditions and are ready to respond to ERCOT’s directives,' added Mercado."
CenterPoint says it will alert customers to any changes on its digital platforms.
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