AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas electric grid managers said Tuesday that power demand reached a record level for a second consecutive day as much of the state saw record heat.
A statement from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the grid, said demand reached a record 67,929 megawatts between 4 and 5 p.m. Tuesday. That beat the day-old record by just over 1,000 megawatts, but ERCOT expects a record demand of 68,100 megawatts on Wednesday.
The demand spike came as temperatures reached 110 degrees in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the hottest reaching North Texas had seen since 2000 and just 3 degrees shy of the all-time record set in 1980.
Extreme heat was keeping much of Texas on a razor-thin margin between sufficient electric power to keep Texans cool and an energy shortage that could mean rolling electric service interruptions, said Kent Saathoff, ERCOT vice president of system planning and operations.
ERCOT is appealing to Texans to reduce their electric power consumption between 3 and 7 p.m. each afternoon this week, when Saathoff said demand was expected to approach or exceed record levels.
In a Tuesday telephone news conference, Saathoff said ERCOT tries to keep 2,300 megawatts of generation capacity ahead of demand, but demand has cut into that margin Monday and Tuesday. But Demand has not eaten into the next reserve threshold of 2,000 megawatts, however. Surpassing that threshold would have prompted ERCOT to cut power to large industrial and commercial users who have agreed to outages in case of emergencies.
If demand were to reach less than 1,750 megawatts of available generation capacity, rolling power interruptions would begin, he said.
"It's just extremely tight," he said of the margin. "We've been bouncing between 2,000 and 2,300 megawatts."
ERCOT also has forced outages of 3,000 megawatts of generating capacity.
However, ERCOT was drawing 1,800 megawatts from wind-powered generators, Saathoff said. "We're getting several hundred megawatts from surrounding states and Mexico," he said. We can get 800 megawatts from the Eastern Interconnect, which includes states east of the Rockies, and a couple of hundred megawatts from Mexico."
ERCOT was appealing to the public to not run dish and laundry washing equipment, hair dryers,coffee makers or other household appliances between 3 and 7 p.m., set pool pumps to run in the early morning or evening, avoid opening refrigerators and freezers unnecessarily, close blinds and drapes and set thermostats to 78 degrees.
"We're concerned particularly for this week," Saathoff said. He also said the increased demand this summer "is far beyond what we expected."
One megawatt of electricity is enough to power about 200 homes in Texas with air conditionersrunning in hot weather for long periods of time.
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