ERCOT, Electric Companies Continues To Restore Power

AUSTIN, TX, Feb. 17, 2021 – The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) continues to make progress on restoring power to the electric system.

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

Since Wednesday 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.