Icy storms put Texas grid under pressure

• 3 years ago (2021-02-15)
• David Flin

North America 1021 Wind 256

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Icy storms knocked out nearly half the wind power generating capacity of Texas, USA, on 14 February, locking up turbine towers and driving electricity demand to record levels, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state grid operator.

Leslie Sopko, spokeswoman for ERCOT, said that of the 25 GW of wind power capacity normally available in Texas, 12 GW was out of service on 14 February “due to the winter weather event we’re experiencing in Texas.” Wind generation is the second largest source of energy in Texas, accounting for 23 per cent of state power supplies in 2020. Natural gas represented 45 per cent.

ERCOT issued an alert asking consumers and businesses to conserve power for the next few days, citing high energy demand resulting from the extreme cold. It said: “We are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units.” ERCOT said that it may need to declare an energy emergency and implement rotating outages to balance out surging demand and limited supply. It said that intentional blackouts would be “a last resort”.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas echoed the call in its own news release, noting narrow margins between cold-driven demand and the available supply.