Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson is urging downtown buildings to do their part to conserve power as the operator of much of the state’s power grid continues to warn of a power shortage.
Downtown buildings need to turn out the lights during Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)’s conservation alert, which began earlier this week, Johnson said in a Monday, June 14, Twitter post.
“With ERCOT again calling for conservation, we are asking our downtown buildings to turn off non-essential outdoor lighting,” Johnson said in his post. “Thank you to @DtownDallasInc for working with us to help ensure Dallas does its part to save electricity this week.”
Johnson isn’t the only one calling for power conservation in Texas. ERCOT has asked Texans to reduce electricity use through at least the end of this week after the state hit a new peak demand record of more than 73,000 MW, surpassing the previous record of 69,123 MW on June 27, 2018.
Meanwhile, about 12,000 megawatts of generation capacity currently is offline for repairs “most of which are unplanned and unexplained,” KXAN reported on Monday, June 14.
The state remains under an ERCOT conservation alert that calls on consumers and businesses to “immediately” reduce electricity usage.
The alert asks residential consumers to set their thermostat to 78 degrees or higher, saying that “every degree of cooling increases your energy use by six to eight percent.” Residential customers also are being asked to turn off and unplug non-essential lights and appliances, avoid using large appliances such as ovens and washing machines, and closing their drapes and blinds.
ERCOT’s alert asks business customers to minimize electric lighting and the use of electric equipment, and large customers to “consider shutting down or reducing non-essential production processes.”
The alert also urges those with critical medical needs to contact their local electric utility and to “have a backup plan in case controlled outages are needed later.”
Requests for energy conservation comes after February’s weather disaster when Winter Storm Uri caused widespread power outages that the ERCOT could not get ahead of and the state power grid came close to collapsing.
