Petroleum Economist Piece: Gas remains the workhorse of the Texas grid

[Note: This story is also published at the Petroleum Economist]

Much has been made about the expansion of wind and solar power, but in the hottest days of August, Texans depended on gas to avert rolling blackouts

The Texas electricity grid made headlines over the summer—most of them crisis-related. Grid managers at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) were forced on many days to issue conservation pleas to users as statewide temperatures regularly soared well over 100°C, creating record demand.

In past summers, such requests from ERCOT have been rare, coming mainly during the hottest days of August. “The Texas grid is tired,” said Rob Allerman, senior director of power analytics at research firm Enverus, by which he meant that ERCOT had been asking operators of many coal and gas power plants in the state to delay scheduled downtime for maintenance and upgrades until the crisis-filled summer had ended. 

Before the summer began, ERCOT predicted system demand would likely peak at around 80GW on the hottest days and assured the public it would have plenty of available generation to meet the load. Demand rose well above that, however, to as high as 85GW on a few August days, straining the system to its limits. There were a few days in which ERCOT had only around 1GW of surplus capacity left during peak hours to avoid emergency measures such as rolling blackouts.