At 9 p.m., the Electric Reliability Board of Texas issued a watch indicating it has anticipated a shortage in energy supplies on Monday “with no solution available in the market,” according to an active operations message posted on the ERCOT website. ERCOT is also asking for voluntary energy savings. ERCOT stopped short of indicating that power could be out and said “no system-wide outages are expected,” according to a news release. The watch is a notification that precedes a “power emergency alert,” which is a more serious alert indicating that ERCOT may order a shutdown or curtailment of operations at large-scale users of electricity, such as generating facilities or large stores. These alerts range from calls to keep to rolling blackouts. A forecast at 9:30 p.m. indicated that Texas could crush its all-time electricity demand on Monday with 80 gigawatts of use predicted in the afternoon. That’s above what ERCOT predicted the summer peak demand would reach in a seasonal readiness report. The most difficult time will be between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. during which time ERCOT predicts that wind power will generate only about 8% of its capacity. At that time, solar will be generating at 81% capacity, but is a much smaller share of Texas’ total energy production. Distributed power, which consists primarily of gas-fired power plants, will be based on generating most of the electricity during peak demand hours. The alert comes as temperatures in Dallas are expected to reach and possibly exceed 105 degrees on Monday. The National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat warning for the entire Dallas-Fort Worth area that is sweeping across a large swath of the state. Individual high temperatures could reach as high as 112 degrees, the weather service said. The heat wave is leading to increased electricity use and could lead to tight energy conditions throughout the week.
