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Winter weather brings record setting temps, energy usage
By Marthe Stinton, mstinton@acnpapers.com
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) kept the lights on this time as another winter storm moved through McKinney and the rest of North Texas.
ERCOT issued rolling blackouts last week during the four day storm to battle high energy demands brought on by freezing temperatures and more than five inches of snow.
"Rotating outages are the last step in a progressive series of emergency procedures that ERCOT follows according to reliability rules," ERCOT Media Relations Manager Dottie Roark said. "We only call for rotating outages as a final fail-safe measure to avoid an uncontrolled blackout across the entire state."
"ERCOT operators worked smoothly through this severe weather event and no emergency procedures or rolling outages were needed," Roark said. "The operators took extra precautions this week and purchased extra reserves to have on hand in the event that a large number of power plants failed again."
Some consumers, however, are worried that the cost of the blackouts could trickle into their electric bills with the record setting power usage levels, but Roark said that all depends on individual circumstances.
"In the summer, when you use more electricity to cool your home, your electric bill will be bigger," she said. "I assume the same goes for winter weather extremes, but of course, it's variable depending on many different factors, like size of the home, the insulation, the appliances, et cetera."
For the second time this month, ERCOT, the grid operator for most of the state, set a new record for winter peak demand with 57,282 megawatts (MW) of energy consumption Thursday between 7 and 8 a.m. The record beat the one set last week by nearly 1,000 MW and 1,400 MW from the 2010 record, according to its website.
The good news on the horizon is that the National Weather Service is calling for warmer temperatures next week as the rolling blackout warnings are being cancelled across the state.
"While it is always a good idea to conserve electricity when you can, we are cancelling the 'Power Watch" at this time," ERCOT Chief Executive Officer Trip Doggett said in a press release. "We appreciate the efforts of the consumers to reduce their electricity consumption during these recent critical days of severe weather."
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