Texas Governor Greg Abbott met with state energy leaders on Tuesday to discuss the power grid’s reliability and preparedness.
Abbott sat down with leaders from the Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas on September 6, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
PUC Chairman Peter Lake, ERCOT Interim President and CEO Brad Jones, and the future CEO of ERCOT, Pablo Vegas, joined the governor. Vegas will officially begin as CEO on October 1.
These men briefed Abbott on the electric grid reforms established by the state to make the grid more reliable and stronger. The meeting attendees also discussed the electric grid’s preparedness to enter the fall season.
Lake said the grid has the resources to meet higher demand in the coming season and explained,
“As our record-setting summer winds down, now is no time to rest. We will continue to ensure the grid is reliable using all the tools we have, including closely managing outages [that] generators need to take for maintenance.”
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has also implemented an updated planning schedule, which allows time for Texas’ generational fleet to perform maintenance. The governor’s press release said this type of maintenance is one way that ERCOT ensures grid reliability.
Abbott was also briefed on the Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy (SARA) report, which looks at the state electric grid’s ability to continue meeting demand.
A summary of the report states that ERCOT will be able to meet peak demand this fall under normal conditions. Peak demand of 64,928 MW is expected for the fall 2022 season, according to the SARA report.
“ERCOT anticipates there will be 93,492 MW of resource capacity available during fall peak demand hours, which includes 5 MW of additional planned utility-scale solar capacity,” the report states.
“ERCOT also expects to have 2,623 MW of operational battery storage resources, which includes 23 MW of planned additions. While some of these battery storage resources may help meet customer demand, they are not currently included in ERCOT’s capacity contribution for fall because they are not expected to provide sustained capacity for meeting system peak loads.”
The fall season defined in the report is October 2022 to November 2022.
