By Tom Kleckner

ERCOT said Tuesday it has sufficient capacity to meet demand for the next five years, including a forecast record peak this summer.

The Texas grid operator released its final seasonal assessment of resource adequacy (SARA) report for the summer months (June-September), projecting a peak demand of nearly 73 GW. That would break its current demand record of 71.1 GW, set last August; the ISO’s peak demand exceeded 70 GW nine times in 2016.

ERCOT also released its latest capacity, demand and reserves (CDR) report, which shows capacity increasing from almost 84.4 GW in 2018 to 87.9 GW through 2022. That is more than enough energy to meet summer load projections that climb from 71 GW in 2018 to 75.2 GW in 2022.

Summer 2017

ERCOT anticipates almost 82 GW of capacity this summer, including nearly 2,500 MW of planned natural gas-fired generation and about 800 MW of wind and grid-scale solar additions.

“We should have adequate resources under extremely high-load or low-wind generation conditions,” ERCOT’s manager of resource adequacy Pete Warnken said during a conference call Tuesday. He cautioned that there is “a small risk” of conservation or other measures if an “unlikely combination of adverse system conditions occurs.”

The ISO expects “near normal summer conditions” based on the last 14 years, with the “strong potential” for more 100-degree days than the previous two summers.

The ISO’s preliminary SARA report for October and November also foresees enough capacity to meet demand, forecast at about 56 GW. The final fall report will be released in September.

ERCOT will likely be without the services South Texas Electric Cooperative’s three gas-fired units southwest of San Antonio, with a combined capacity of 61 MW. The co-op filed a suspension-of-operations notice with the ISO, saying it plans to decommission and retire the units in August.

Planning Reserve Margin Above 16%

The CDR report indicates ERCOT’s planning reserve margins will be above 16% for the next five years, with the margin exceeding 18% in four of those years, according to the report. The 2018 summer planning reserve margin of 18.9% is slightly lower than the December CDR report, following adjustments made for planned generation additions.

Warren Lasher, the ISO’s senior director of system planning, said ERCOT has received more than 75 generator interconnection requests each of the last two years, though not all projects will get built. The ISO’s target planning reserve margin is 13.75%.

More than 10 GW of planned resources, with anticipated summer peak capacity of almost 5,500 MW, are expected to be in commercial operation by summer 2018, including nearly 1,800 MW of new wind and grid-scale solar generation resources (summer capacity 437 MW) added since the December CDR.