as ERCOT’s riskiest hour in its summer reliability assessment. Where grid operators once planned to meet peak power demand earlier in the day, now they need to plan for the evening hours when temperatures are still high but solar output wanes. The dynamic points to a change in the way the grid is operated, analysts said. The second- and third-highest weekly peaks occurred Tuesday at 5 p.m. Electricity demand last week peaked at more than 79 GW on Monday around 5 p.m., when solar output was falling, according to U.S. Yet the heat wave also underscored the limits of solar’s abilities. “ERCOT is working with a bigger buffer than it’s had in recent years.” “That made the difference between simply needing a voluntary conservation call and what would have been emergency conditions without those solar farms and blackouts,” said Dan Cohan, a professor who studies the power sector at Rice University in Houston. Solar generation tends to be its highest during the height of the day, when electricity demand rises as Texans seek the relief of their air conditioners. Solar has helped fill that gap, especially at critical times of the day. The largest outages were reported at a nuclear plant and two coal facilities, which were running at reduced levels through Wednesday, according to the most recent ERCOT data.ĮRCOT did not respond to a request for comment. ERCOT reported 10G W of power plant outages as of Saturday morning, or slightly less than the 11 GW of outages that the grid operator’s summer planning scenarios describe as an extreme scenario. The solar boost is important for two reasons. estimates Texas has added about 4.4 gigawatts of solar capacity since last summer, resulting in a lot more electricity during summer heat waves.Ībout 15 percent of ERCOT’s power generation came from solar alone during most afternoon hours, often making solar the second-largest source of electricity production after natural gas, according to Grid Status, a website that aggregates electricity data from grid operators around the country.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. “That is a lot of solar and wind, and stabilizing prices and shielding us from our vulnerability to dispatchable resources, many of which are older, dropping out and causing risky grid reliability events.” “On most of our days, we’re getting close to 20 percent or more from renewables, particularly at peak,” Silverstein said. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator serving most of the state, issued its first voluntary conservation notice of the year Tuesday.ĮRCOT did not reach emergency conditions last week. The recent heat wave arrived against that backdrop, with solar coming to the rescue as temperatures across the state rose. The bill passed the Senate, but ultimately died in the House. This year, Republican lawmakers passed a bill designed to encourage the build-out of natural gas and pushed legislation that would have made it harder to pass permits and connect renewable facilities to the grid. Power plants farther north fared much better, even though they experienced colder temperatures.īut that has done little to quell the political debate. Texas power plants and gas infrastructure are simply not winterized to withstand extreme cold, a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report found. The debate often has failed to reflect the real cause of the outages. Democrats and environmentalists pointed to failures at gas plants and the pipelines that serve them. Republicans and fossil fuel interests sought to blame renewables. Texas’ grid has been at the center of national debate over the country’s transition to cleaner electricity sources, pitting the need to reduce planet-warming pollution against the necessity of keeping on the lights.Ī powerful winter storm in 2021 led to widespread power outages in much of Texas. "We cannot change our built infrastructure fast enough.” “This kind of heat dome and long-lasting extreme heat conditions are not anything we have seen before in Texas, and yet they are happening more and more often," Silverstein added. “We learned that climate change isn’t messing around,” said Alison Silverstein, a Texas-based energy consultant who authored a high-profile Department of Energy report on the reliability of the country’s electric system in 2018. The broiling conditions are expected to continue this week. The current heat wave has shattered temperature records in many cities and reached as high as 118 degrees Fahrenheit along the Mexican border. The last few days have offered a preview of this hotter future.
Yet, in spite of the sun-powered boost, analysts say the state’s electric grid remains unprepared for a warming climate where intense heat waves will become more frequent and severe. So it goes in Texas, where a surge in solar power generation is helping the state’s primary grid operator navigate an ongoing and stifling heat wave. CLIMATEWIRE | Live by the sun, die by the sun.
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