Texas weathers another overnight freeze, outages fall

Texas weathered yet another night of below-freezing temperatures with power outages continuing their decline across the state, indicating that the grid remained relatively stable with enough generation to meet demand.

The grid was to be tested early this morning as more citizens woke up and increased their power use to heat homes and begin their days, and the need for rolling outages to control demand was possible.

Power outages in Texas as of 7:45am ET numbered 187,151, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.US, down from 503,000 at midday yesterday.

A total of 36GW of power generation capacity was still unavailable to the Texas electric grid operator as of 6:30pm ET yesterday, with 21.4GW of the outages thermal generation — natural gas, coal and nuclear — and the remainder renewables. The total remaining capacity that is off line represents about 42pc of the total generation capacity that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) lists as its expected capacity to manage summer 2021 peak demand, or 86GW.

The 1,250MW South Texas 1 nuclear unit is back up to full power today after shutting on 15 February from a frozen cooling water intake and beginning to ramp back up yesterday, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Hourly electricity demand on the state's grid at 7am ET totaled 55,055 MWh, up by 3pc from the prior hour, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Natural gas-fired power met the lion's share of demand at the end of the day yesterday, at 31,881 MWh, with coal at 7,676 MWh, nuclear at 3,942 MWh and wind at 3,667 MWh, according to the most recent EIA data available.

ERCOT yesterday said it had enough generation to meet demand on its grid and notified utilities to restore service to all customers.

The grid operator did not issue any controlled or rotating outages yesterday as generation supply remained stable, utility Oncor Energy said. ERCOT yesterday morning had said it would direct utilities to implement rolling outages if that need arose. The grid operator does not control rolling outages itself but directs utilities to begin them if the grid needs to shed load.

As of last night ERCOT said the only remaining outages across the state were a result of damage from the storm, such as downed power lines and inoperable equipment, or in some cases power transmission that has to be manually turned back on by crews in the field. A smaller portion of remaining outages are large industrial facilities that remain off line in order to conserve power.

Utility CenterPoint Energy, which serves the Houston area, showed 4,015 customers without power as of 7:48am ET, down from 31,000 outages at midday yesterday. The utility last night issued a plea to its customers to continue to conserve electricity in order to avoid too much demand on the grid.

Oncor reported 27,000 remaining outages as of 7am ET, down from 178,000 at midday yesterday. Oncor said low temperatures, hazardous road conditions and the residual effects of controlled outages on its equipment has complicated the restoration process, with equipment damage in some areas.

The temperature in Dallas as of 8:15am ET was just 17°F (-8°C), and is forecast to reach a high of 36°F today. Houston was at 25°F, and forecast to reach as high as 45°F.

By TL Hamilton