ERCOT says Texas could see a significant chance of outages if 2021 freeze were to repeat

From Houston Chronicle.

Texas could see a significant probability of power outages in January if winter freezes such as those experienced in recent years were to hit the state, an Electric Reliability Council of Texas report released this month found.

While those conditions are considered unlikely, ERCOT’s models showed a nearly 50% chance of outages during the highest-risk morning period if Texas were to see weather similar to the 2022 freeze around Christmas.

That probability jumps to close to 80% if the state were to experience weather conditions similar to the notorious February 2021 freeze, dubbed Winter Storm Uri by the Weather Channel. Uri caused dayslong outages and was responsible for at least 200 deaths across the state.

The report lays out what could happen under “worst-case scenarios,” Kristi Hobbs, ERCOT’s vice president of system planning and weatherization, said in an interview. It’s not a forecast of what the Texas grid operator expects this January, she said.

Even in a worst-case scenario, outages wouldn’t span days as they did during Uri, Hobbs said.

“What we would expect is limited in duration, so a couple to a few hours. We wouldn’t expect it to be throughout the day,” she said.

ERCOT’s primary job as the Texas grid operator is to balance electricity demand and supply at all times. Demand exceeding supply could lead to damage across the grid network, which could plunge the state into darkness for weeks. ERCOT can initiate rotating outages as a last resort to lower demand.