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Photo by: Brett Coomer/Staff photographer
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator for 90% of Texas, is closely monitoring extreme cold weather expected to impact Texas Monday through Wednesday. ERCOT said last week it expected to have sufficient electricity supply to meet demand and didn't expect there to be a grid emergency.
Conditions are forecast to be similar to those during Winter Storm Elliott, the 2022 Christmas cold snap, though not as long-lasting, according to Houston Chronicle meteorologist Justin Ballard. ERCOT previously projected a 1-in-6 chance of rolling outages in January at the highest-risk hour of 8 a.m. if weather conditions matched those during Elliott.
The greatest risk of winter grid-scale outages comes in the morning when people and businesses start their day but solar power has yet to ramp up, ERCOT staff have said. If they were to occur, grid experts don't expect outages to be as severe or as long-lasting as in 2021's Winter Storm Uri. That's because there's more solar power and batteries on the grid and improvements made to the grid by ERCOT and its regulator, the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
Experts are watching several factors this week: how the weather plays out, how much electricity demand there will be, how much natural gas supplies will reduce, how many natural gas and coal power plants outages there will be and how wind and solar power perform.
More energy news
Photo by: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The Texas electric grid has failed and wobbled in recent years; Texans have every reason to worry.
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What We're Reading
A 400-mile transmission line from the Texas/Louisiana border connecting the ERCOT grid to the grids in the southeastern United States is in the works, the Dallas Morning News reports.
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