The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator for most of Texas, is asking electric consumers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley area to limit or reduce electric use where possible through Tuesday, especially during the 3-7 p.m. peak demand hours.
“With some unplanned electric generation outages, combined with high temperatures in the region, we expect tight conditions during peak demand hours over the next few days,” said Dan Woodfin, ERCOT director of System Operations. “Although recent improvements have increased transmission import capacity to the Valley, the removal of the Frontera generation facility by its owners from the ERCOT system has reduced our capacity to serve Valley-area demand during these types of conditions.”
“We believe these voluntary actions by consumers can help limit the need for further action, such as rotating outages, to maintain overall reliability in the Valley,” said Woodfin.
This conservation request is limited to the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The ERCOT grid is not experiencing any system-wide issues at this time.
ERCOT manages the flow of electric power to nearly 24 million Texas customers, representing about 90 percent of the state’s electric load. As the independent system operator for the region, ERCOT schedules power on an electric grid that connects more than 46,500 miles of transmission lines and 550 generation units. ERCOT also performs financial settlement for the competitive wholesale bulk-power market and administers retail switching for more than 7 million premises in competitive choice areas. ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, governed by a board of directors and subject to oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas Legislature.
