ERCOT issues “tight grid conditions” notice, roughly 1 year after mass outages

AUSTIN, Texas — The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Wednesday that it anticipated “tight grid conditions” until Friday, according to an operations notice. The notice takes effect Wednesday night (Thursday morning) at midnight.

The notice said, “To ensure all possible generation is available to serve system demand, ERCOT has requested that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) exercise its enforcement discretion with respect to generator exceedances of TCEQ air permit limitations.”

The notice also said, “TCEQ has communicated to ERCOT that it will use its enforcement discretion in evaluating generation facility exceedances of emission and operational permit limits in order to maximize generation availability during this period of concern.”

In simple terms, power providers are more likely to get forgiveness for environmental issues during the time in which the notice remains in effect.

Temperatures dropped starting overnight Tuesday morning, leading to freezing conditions across much of Texas. Temperatures for much of Texas are expected to rebound starting Thursday afternoon and continuing through Friday.

In February 2021, extreme cold led to power outages because consumers needed more power to stay warm. At the same time, the cold caused a reduction in electric generation capacity. ERCOT was forced to cut power to millions of Texans in order to prevent a complete loss of the power grid.

“Our forecast shows there is sufficient generation to meet expected demand and we continue to inform the market and others of evolving weather conditions,” ERCOT said Wednesday evening. “Out of an abundance of caution, ERCOT requested enforcement discretion earlier today so that no generation units become unavailable due to environmental limits.”

“We will continue our aggressive approach to meet the energy needs of Texas. We do not anticipate issuing any conservation notices at this time,” ERCOT also said.

As of Wednesday evening, the ERCOT supply and demand chart showed enough power to meet needs along with a projection showing tighter conditions but not a shortfall.

EverythingLubbock.com reached out to Lubbock Power & Light for a statement.

LP&L said, “Following the passage of ERCOT market reforms during the last Legislative session, a renewed emphasis has been placed on ERCOT communications with any and all relevant state agencies ahead of winter weather events in order to ensure all parties work together to maintain reliability of the statewide system.”

LP&L began a transition to ERCOT from the Southwest Power Pool in the weeks after the extreme weather event in 2021.

This story was updated Wednesday evening to reflect a statement from ERCOT.