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Posted 3 years ago | 3 minute read

Eirgrid warns of “challenging” winter

ERCOT prepares for winter freeze

One year ago, record-breaking cold weather hit Texas and surging electricity demand and supply outages led to some of the worst blackouts in US history.

Much has been written in the year since about weatherizing power plants, fixing the natural gas market, updated standards and procedures, and other reforms. But once again Texas is vulnerable as Winter Storm Landon arrives.

The grid operator has issued a watch issued for an extreme cold weather event with forecasted icing conditions for the ERCOT Region Wednesday evening, February 2, through Sunday, February 6, 2022. As a result, demand is forecast to near levels seen during the 2021 winter storm. ERCOT has said it is “taking early preventative action ahead of the expected increase in demand to ensure the grid remains reliable”. But many of the measures set out to increase resilience have not yet taken effect.

On February 2, ERCOT requested that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) exercise its enforcement discretion with respect to generator exceedances of TCEQ air permit limitations to ensure all possible generation is available to serve system demand. It has also been reported that crypto miners are curtailing energy consumption.

This means over the coming days there is a real risk of conservation alerts or load shed events. For businesses, which rely on a constant energy supply from the grid, alerts on potential risks to supplies will be a worry. But there are actions that businesses can take to protect their operations and bottom lines.

Last Winter a combination of freezing and fuel issues caused about three-quarters of the unplanned generating unit outages, derates and failures to start during the February 2021 storm, according to a joint report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corp. Of those, gas-fired units experienced 58% of all generating unit issues. Last month the grid operator filed its final winter weatherization readiness report of the season with the Public Utility Commission of Texas. The report shows 321 out of 324 electric generation units and transmission facilities fully passed inspection for new winterization regulations from the Commission.

GridBeyond VP North America Wayne Muncaster said:

“ERCOT recently confirmed that around 70% of generators that had unplanned outages in June, had also been forced offline during the February winter storm, which suggests that problems maybe go beyond insufficient weatherization. That said, many of the recommendations and legislation passed through the Senate last year in response to winter storm Uri have not yet been implemented. Core to GridBeyond’s proposition is active participation in managing energy demand and costs for businesses, and this is more relevant in Texas today than ever. The solutions are out there for businesses in Texas to meet the challenge directly rather than relying on others to fix it for them.

“GridBeyond’s ERCOT price forecasting, automated non-critical load management and dispatch and funded back up generation and storage allows our clients to see the problem hours in advance and/or react in real-time. We also deliver the tools and technologies you need to mitigate against grid outages and disruptions, reduce costs and even gain revenues.”

Here’s how to play it so you could make $185,000 per MW per year in ERCOT

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