ERCOT last week approved two suspension-of-operations requests from Austin Energy, saying both generating units are not required to support the system after it conducted a reliability analysis.
On June 16, the Texas grid operator gave the go-ahead to retire Decker Lake 1, a 49-year-old gas-fired steam unit with a capacity of 315 MW. The unit will be decommissioned and retired permanently as of Oct. 31.
The next day, ERCOT signed off on Austin Energy’s request to place the Nacogdoches Generating Facility into seasonal mothballs, with an operating period of May 15 to Oct. 15. The wood-fired East Texas plant is the country’s largest biomass plant at 105 MW.
Austin Energy has told ERCOT it intends to retire both steam turbines at its Decker Lake facility. Decker 2 will be retired following the 2021 summer peak. Both units are nearing the end of their normal life expectancies. (See “Austin Energy to Retire 735 MW of Gas Units,” ERCOT Briefs: Week of June 1, 2020.)
The municipal utility acquired Nacogdoches from Southern Power last year. It has a 20-year power purchase agreement for the plant’s energy that expires in 2032.
System Demand Nears Pre-COVID Levels
Staff said “it appears” the pandemic had less effect across all hours for the week beginning June 7. Weekly energy use is down by about 1%, and there have been no impacts on daily peak demand.
ERCOT came close to a monthly record on June 8-9 when demand approached 69.1 GW. The grid operator did set a monthly record in April with a peak demand of 55.2 GW.
The backcast analysis compares model results using actual weather versus actual hourly load. The model was last updated in January and does not reflect the pandemic’s effects.
