ERCOT Hopes to Keep Lights on This Summer
Even though weather experts are not expecting another long, hot summer like the one we had last year, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas is searching for ways to keep the lights on through this summer and in the future.
ERCOT, which serves 23 million people across Texas, says it plans to bring back 2,000 megawatts of power from idle plants to meet the state's growing demand.
With that extra power, ERCOT says it doesn't expect any rolling blackouts, but emergency alerts are probable, and people may be asked to conserve power during peak hours.
Barring unexpected power plant problems and outages, ERCOT believes the state's power grid will have more than enough power available to meet the estimated demand.
It's worth remembering that ERCOT was saying almost the same thing at this time last year. However, the drought and the extreme temperatures were the worst that ERCOT had ever predicted.
ERCOT slogged its way through record-high temperatures and drought conditions that forced at least one North Texas power plant to reduce its power generation because it couldn't maintain adequate water levels in its cooling reservoir.
So the bottom line is that ERCOT is just hoping to get through the summer with as few problems as possible. May it be so. We join them in that hope.
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