Officials were forced to halt deliveries on a long-distance transmission system, stranding electricity supplies hundreds of miles from major population centers, resulting in Texas’ worst power crisis in more than two years.
On Wednesday, Texas’s record heat increased the need for power to run air conditioners, and a crucial transmission line that supplies the Dallas area showed signs of overloading. As a result, at 6:34 p.m. local time, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas issued a transmission watch alert, suspending some power shipments from wind farms in South Texas.
According to Brad Jones, the former interim chief executive officer of ERCOT, the precautionary measure meant to maintain the integrity of the transmission network required generators to reduce their output by approximately 1,000 megawatts at a time when unprecedented consumer demand was straining electricity supplies. That is enough electricity to power about 200,000 homes.
“The grid was facing the potential of congestion overload on the line coming from south Texas toward Dallas,” Jones said during an interview. “All the wind that was on in the south was struggling to get to Dallas to help meet demand. So right in the middle of this, ERCOT had to reduce generation in the south to prevent that line from being overloaded.”
Promptly after the transmission alert, ERCOT started conveying crisis power saves while utilities prepared for intentional power outages. After sunset, demand began to decrease, preventing forced power outages. A spokesperson for ERCOT declined to comment. The close call was hailed by the office of Governor Greg Abbott as a victory.
“During record-setting temperatures this summer, Texas set and broke power demand records 10 times without any system-wide issues or disruptions for the more than 26 million Texans served by the ERCOT grid,” Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said in an email. “The grid has been able to meet those challenges and respond in record ways, providing more power than ever before, in large part because of the reforms passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Abbott.”
Power request is supposed to by and by knock facing supply limits in the second-biggest US state around 8 p.m., as per ERCOT’s most recent figure.