ERCOT said Wednesday it still expects record demand this summer and the potential need for emergency measures, despite a drop in load from the COVID-19 pandemic’s continued effect on the Texas economy.
In making its final resource assessment for the summer months, the grid operator used data from Moody’s Analytics to drop its peak load forecast to 75.2 GW, almost 1.5 GW less than its preliminary assessment. However, the forecast is still higher than last August’s all-time record demand of 74.8 GW.
The pandemic has reduced weekly energy usage within ERCOT’s footprint by 3 to 4%.
“There is a lot of uncertainty in today’s world, but we are confident that Texas will still be hot this summer,” CEO Bill Magness said in a statement.
Given the expected drop in demand and capacity additions since the last seasonal adequacy resource assessment (SARA), staff adjusted the summer reserve margin to 12.6%, up from 10.6%. Seven wind, solar and storage projects, totaling 276 MW of summer peak contributions, have begun commercial operations since the March SARA.
ERCOT said that even with 82.2 GW of capacity available this summer, energy emergency alerts are still possible should there be extreme weather, low wind generation or higher-than-normal generation outages. The grid operator called two EEAs last summer, when it had a reserve margin of 8.6%. Demand did not reach record peak levels either day, but wind production was unexpectedly low and thermal generation outages were high. (See “ERCOT CEO Briefs Commission on Summer Performance,” Texas PUC Briefs: Aug. 29, 2019.)
Pete Warnken, ERCOT’s manager of resource adequacy, said the risk of an emergency is still present but less likely with a reserve margin that is almost 50% higher. “We anticipate the risk is now lower with typical grid conditions,” he said.
The grid operator also released a preliminary SARA for the fall — 6.8 GW of additional capacity will help meet a predicted peak demand of almost 61 GW — and an updated capacity, demand and reserves (CDR) report.
The CDR report, a 10-year view of the ISO’s reserve capacity, uses pre-COVID load forecasts because of staff’s uncertainty over how the pandemic will affect future years. The report forecasts reserve margins of 17.3% and 19.7% in 2021 and 2022, respectively. ERCOT has approved 2.3 GW of resources for commercial operations since the December 2019 CDR, and staff have also included 6.5 GW of planned resources.
Preliminary data provided by generation project developers indicate the grid operator will have almost 18 GW of planned capacity additions for summer 2021, much of it renewables and some small, flexible gas-fired resources, ERCOT said.
