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The
Electric Reliability Council Of Texas (ERCOT), which operates
the grid for more than 26 million customers which use about 90%
of the state's power load, said it had operating reserves of
2,929 MW as of 8:37 p.m. CDT.
Power usage was projected to hit 87,083 MW on Friday, a new
record high as demand has surged over the summer.
Temperatures in Houston, the most populous city in Texas,
reached as high as 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit (39°Celsius) on
Thursday, according to AccuWeather.
Extreme weather in Texas has been in focus since a deadly storm
in February 2021 left millions without power, water and heat for
days as ERCOT struggled to avoid a grid collapse.
The Emergency Response Service (ERS) helps decrease the
likelihood of system-wide load shedding by paying qualified
entities to make arrangements with residential, commercial and
industrial participants to either reduce consumption or increase
generation across the grid.
"ERCOT is requesting Transmission Operators to implement
distribution voltage reduction measures if available," it said
in a notice.
ERCOT said it also expected lower power reserves due to reduced
wind generation.
Real-time power prices rose above $5,000 in most of ERCOT Texas
hubs, according to the ERCOT website.
The grid operator had earlier urged consumers to conserve power
between 3 p.m. CDT (2000 GMT) and 8 p.m. CDT on Thursday as
demand surged.
Discount Power, a unit of NRG Energy, the largest U.S. retail
electricity provider, had also requested that its Texas
customers conserve electricity between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. CDT.
(Reporting by Ashitha Shivaprasad, Rahul Paswan, Harshit Verma
and Swati Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese, Paul Simao
and Diane Craft and Miral Fahmy)
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