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Earlier this week Texas grid operator ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) asked residents to reduce energy usage amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid rolling blackouts. ERCOT manages electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers and represents 90% of the state’s electric load, according to the company. Temperatures soared to 115+ degrees with the heat index in parts of Texas on Thursday amid an excessive heat warning. ERCOT issued the voluntary conservation notice due to extreme temperatures, forecasted high demand and lower reserves due to low wind generation. ... The wind turbines aren’t producing enough energy. Texas...

ERCOT’s board of directors on Tuesday named Pablo Vegas, a utility industry veteran and executive at an Indiana utility, to lead the state’s beleaguered power grid manager, still recovering from the catastrophic failures of the February 2021 winter storm. Public trust in ERCOT has remained low since the February 2021 freeze knocked out power to millions of Texans for days on end, leading to the deaths of hundreds. Ten years earlier in 2011 the exact same scenario resulted in the same number of deaths and economic losses. ERCOT will pay Vegas a $990,000 base salary, and his contract said he...

As searing Texas heat drives power demand to record highs, the state’s grid operator is ordering plants to run at a historic pace, often forcing them to put off maintenance to keep cranking out electricity. That’s helped keep the lights on, for now, but the short-term focus is putting even more stress on a system that’s already stretched near the limit. Twice in the past week, officials have called on Texans to limit electricity use during scorching afternoons as demand inched perilously close to overwhelming supply. Now, there are growing concerns over how long power plants can maintain the grueling...

An early summer heatwave pattern continues to boil parts of the Central and Southern Plains. This means parts of Texas will continue to roast with temperatures forecasted to reach triple digits next week. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s power grid operator, is already warning of record energy demand next week as customers crank up the AC. Power consultant Doug Lewin, who actively monitors the Texas grid, told FOX 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth that triple-digit temperatures are very concerning because it’s “still not even summer.” On Tuesday, ERCOT reported power grid demand jumped to 70,703 megawatts, smashing...

Texas residents are being asked to conserve power after six power plants tripped offline. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the majority of the state's power grid, wrote Friday that the incident resulted in the loss of approximately 2,900 megawatts of electricity.

AUSTIN, TEXAS – The Texas power grid is struggling with fluctuating energy prices and sporadic service, but the state’s growing bitcoin mining community believes it can help fix it. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz agrees. “A lot of the discussion around bitcoin views bitcoin as a consumer of energy,” said Cruz at an event in October. “The perspective I’m suggesting is very much the reverse, which is as a way to strengthen our energy infrastructure.” The grid is called ERCOT — short for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is the organization tasked with operating it — and it’s fussy...

The UT researchers said that 67 sites were allowed to sign up for a voluntary “emergency response” program coordinated by ERCOT. Dozens of mostly natural gas facilities, including some directly supplying fuel to power plants around the state, were paid to have their electricity cut off in an emergency like February’s devastating winter storm, according to a report released Tuesday by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. The UT researchers said that 67 sites, mostly gas refining and pipeline infrastructure locations around Texas, were allowed to sign up for a voluntary “emergency response” program coordinated by the Electric...

The City of Austin’s biomass power plant sat idle again, producing no power, during another statewide electricity shortage last week, according to the city’s electric utility Austin Energy... “Last week when ERCOT called for conservation, we started the 24 – 48 hour process to start the plant back up. Upon startup, we discovered an issue that needed repair... Austin’s biomass plant produced no power. The grid alert last week unnerved many Texans, but it registered as a relatively minor inconvenience compared to the winter storm crisis Texas experienced in February. The Nacogdoches plant was powered off during that event as...

The oldest maxim in politics is “follow the money.” That maxim also applies to electric grids. Following the billions of dollars that have been spent on the Texas grid explains why the state continues to have electricity shortages. On Monday, ERCOT, the state’s troubled grid operator, asked Texans to reduce their electricity use. That request came exactly four months after Texas residents were asked to conserve electricity due to a massive winter storm. Before going further, I’ll give you the punchline: As I explained in these pages in April, about $66 billion was spent on wind and solar in Texas...

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the regulatory agency that manages Texas’ power grid, said tight grid conditions are expected this week due to high number of forced generation outages, and urged Texans to conserve energy. The announcement came one month after it published its latest seasonal assessment projecting a less than a 1% chance of blackouts occurring this summer. It also came just four months after the state’s historic power grid failure left millions of Texans in the cold and dark. Without heat and water during sub-zero temperatures in mid-February, 111 Texans died. On Monday, ERCOT asked Texans...

The president and CEO of the Texas power grid has been fired after mounting calls for his ouster following the deadly blackouts that left millions of people without electricity and heat for days in subfreezing temperatures. Bill Magness was given a two-month termination notice Wednesday by the board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a cooperative responsible for 90 percent of the state’s electricity. On Monday, the state’s top utility regulator resigned in the wake of the one of the worst blackouts in US history. .... Grid operators disconnected more than 4 million customers as the system buckled, which...

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas announced in a Tuesday notice to the Public Utility Commission of Texas that four of its board members will resign effective Wednesday, Feb. 24.. A fifth board member separately submitted her resignation. Gov. Greg Abbott sent out a statement saying he welcomed the resignations. ... All five members who are resigning live out of state, ... Last week, amid growing frustrations and public outcry during the winter storms in Texas, ERCOT removed the names of its board members from its website. It has since restored those names. Prior to being pulled down, the biographies...

Dubbed the “Blue Hills Wind Project,” GH America Energy, a company owned by Shanghai billionaire Sun Guangxin, plans to purchase nearly 130,000 acres of land immediately across from Laughlin Air Force Base.Guangxin is a former officer in the Chinese army and is the richest person in China’s embattled Xinjiang province. GH America Energy is a subsidiary of Guanghui Energy Company, based out of Shanghai, where Sun Guangxin owns a controlling 44% stake, according to Market Screener. Late last year, Del Rio Mayor, Bruno Lozano, wrote to federal officials close to the matter, “We believe that this project and all future...

The family of a Texas boy who apparently froze to death — after the family’s mobile home lost power during an intense cold snap — have filed a $100 million lawsuit against the region’s utility providers, blaming them for the tragedy. Cristian Pavon Pineda, 11, was found lifeless in a bed next to his toddler brother Monday, as temperatures inside plunged into the single digits and the family struggled to keep warm.

At Griddy, transparency has always been our goal. We know you are angry and so are we. Here’s what’s been going down: On Monday evening the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) cited its “complete authority over ERCOT” to direct that ERCOT set pricing at $9/kWh until the grid could manage the outage situation after being ravaged by the freezing winter storm. Under ERCOT's market rules, such a pricing scenario is only enforced when available generation is about to run out (they usually leave a cushion of around 1,000 MW). This is the energy market that Griddy was designed...

During their last meeting ahead of the winter storm that left millions of Texans without electricity and potable water for days on end, top officials at the state electric grid operator spent less than one minute discussing the impending storm and whether the state was prepared. Bill Magness, president and chief executive officer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, spoke briefly about the winter weather during his report to the board at the Feb. 9 meeting, the only mention of the incoming storm during the public portion of the virtual meeting, which spanned two hours, 28 minutes. Magness spoke...

he White House said on Thursday a severe winter storm engulfing Texas and nearby states was the type of extreme weather event that climate change is triggering, rejecting assertions by Texas officials that “green energy” caused widespread power outages. The crisis in the largest U.S. oil- and gas-producing state has put Democratic President Joe Biden’s White House squarely at odds with Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who initially did not acknowledge Biden’s 2020 election win. Abbott had ordered state officials in January to fight Biden’s push here to combat climate change by pausing new oil and gas leases, and cutting...

After winter storms continued to barrage the state Tuesday night, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the body overseeing the grid that serves 90 percent of the state’s homes, couldn’t offer a timeline for when power for every Texan would be restored. Over the long weekend, the council had advised local utilities to shed energy use with rolling outages in order to maintain the reliability of the electric system after a surge in demand, or otherwise risk uncontrolled blackouts that will take longer to reverse. Some four million homes in the state had been left in the...

Many, probably most, Texans hadn’t heard of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas until this week. Then a historic winter storm froze up the place and “electric reliability” turned into an unfunny joke for far too many. Their electricity was reliably unavailable.Well, except in certain well-lit urban downtowns. If you live outside of those, as most Texans do, you were forced to play a grim version of Russian Roulette with your power and water supply — if you could get either. Your water pipes may have frozen and burst, rendering your frigid home uninhabitable. I have friends who are dealing...

About ERCOTThe Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers -- representing about 90 percent of the state’s electric load. As the independent system operator for the region, ERCOT schedules power on an electric grid that connects more than 46,500 miles of transmission lines and 680+ generation units. It also performs financial settlement for the competitive wholesale bulk-power market and administers retail switching for 8 million premises in competitive choice areas. ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, governed by a board of directors and subject to oversight by...