ERCOT Hopes To Restore Residents To Short Rolling Blackouts Vs. Prolonged Outages Soon

Texas’s power grid operators hope to return energy customers throughout the state to short rolling blackouts soon.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas aims to have most Texas homes experiencing power outages for only 30 to 60 minutes at a time. 

In a press conference Wednesday, Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said he did not think the shift would happen before Thursday morning.

Millions of Texans have been without power for days now as a historic winter storm sweeps the state.

Areas in Central Texas saw at least six inches of snow overnight Sunday. Schools throughout Central Texas have canceled classes or switched to virtual learning through the end of the week.

Local municipalities in Hays County have announced office closures, which will continue into Friday, while the city continues to suffer from power outages.

Bill Magness, ERCOT’s CEO, said he is optimistic that the Texas grid will see generators come back online Wednesday as the state warms slightly.

ERCOT reported this morning that the state was short 47,000 megawatts, which was affecting approximately 2.8 million Texans.

During a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Governor Greg Abbott said 6,000 megawatts have been added to the state’s power grid providing power for approximately 1.2 million households since 12:01 AM. 

“Several things have assisted with this,” Abbott said. “One of the power outages in the state was the South Texas Nuclear Plant Project, as well as coal-generated power, were shut down.”

Abbott said South Texas Nuclear Plant Project and coal-generated power should come on this evening and adding additional power.

According to Abbott, some natural gas produced in Texas is currently being shipped to locations out of the state; however, he issued an order, which will be in effect thru Feb. 21, instructing natural gas producers within the state to sell to power generators.

“Looking at the next couple of days,” Magness said, “If those things break right, and we get the generation online in the quantity we need to, we’re optimistic we could move through this.”

According to Magness, they are unable to project specifics on how long the power outages will continue to affect Texas due to the many variables around the resources.

ERCOT has come under scrutiny this week for inadequately being prepared for the storm.

Abbott declared an investigation into the non-profit organization an emergency item in the 2021 Legislative session to improve transparency between ERCOT and Texans.

“Blame can be assessed,” Magness said in regard to a call for ERCOT leadership’s resignation. “But this team that has been protecting the grid from a much worse situation are really the key people who will lead us out and who has saved us from those sorts of very bad blackout situations in the past.”

Magness said the grid operator’s decision to begin rolling power outages prevented a statewide blackout, which could have taken months to fix.

“We are working around the clock to restore power to Texans,” said Magness. “We made progress today, but it will not be good enough until every person has their power back.”

Since this morning, ERCOT has been able to restore approximately 8,000 MW, which is about 1.6 million households. This afternoon, there was sufficient generation available to begin restoring 1,000 MW every hour.

“We’re at a point in the restoration where we’re going to keep energizing circuits as fast as we safely can until we run out of available generation,” said ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin. “We hope to make significant progress overnight.”

It is possible that by morning, as load increases, local utilities may be able to go back to rotating outages versus keeping power off for extended periods of time.

As of 6 p.m., approximately 43,000 MW of generation has been forced off the system during this extreme winter weather event. Of that, 26,500 MW is thermal and nearly 17,000 MW is wind and solar.