The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (is that an oxymoron?) doesn’t just have a problem with unreliable and unpredictable gas-fired generating plants. It has a serious high-voltage north-south transmission bottleneck.
ERCOT told the Public Utilities Commission of Texas last week (Sept. 13) in an 11-page report that it came near to ordering rolling blackouts on Sept. 6 in part because a “high-risk transmission constraint in South Texas restricted the flow of generation out of that area to the rest of the ERCOT Transmission Grid.”
On that evening as solar generation was fading, gas generation was sketchy, and wind was unusually calm, ERCOT wrote, “Following the solar generation ramp-down on September 6, and with low wind generation output in the North, Central, and West regions but high wind generation output in the South region, energy flow out of the South increased the loading on a significant 345 kV transmission line beyond that line’s post-contingency limit.” So ERCOT had to curtail “1,590 MW of generation from the South region.”
The situation in Texas at that moment was dire, risking complete grid collapse. ERCOT reported, “On September 6, 2023, from approximately 7:10 p.m. until approximately 7:25 p.m., ERCOT observed a decline in the system frequency from 60 Hz to 59.77 Hz, which is outside the target range of 59.9 to 60.1 Hz.” The Texas transmission agency had to throw every tool it had at the problem. ERCOT declared “Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) Level 2,” including “distribution voltage reduction measures.”
The wholesale emergency measures worked: “At 7:37 p.m., system frequency was restored to 60 Hz through these actions, and no additional measures, including firm load-shedding, were necessary.”
Meeting with the PUCT to discuss the report, Woody Rickerson, ERCOT chief operating officer, said, “There was no headroom left, and so in order to find some headroom, we went into EEA2.”
Former ERCOT head Brad Jones told Bloomberg, “All the wind that was on in the south was struggling to get to Dallas to help meet demand, So right in the middle of this, ERCOT had to reduce generation in the south to prevent that line from being overloaded.”
Dallas-Fort Worth’s Fox4 News reported that PUCT commissioner Jimmy Glotfelty commented on the ERCOT report, “I think there is a big discussion that’s missing on the thermal outages in the north. It was remiss that this letter that was sent to us didn’t talk about them at all, but from conversations I’ve had with you all at ERCOT, that was one of the reasons this transmission line became overloaded.”
Glotfelty is an experienced electricity analyst, having served as Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s energy policy director. As president, Bush named him to advise Energy Secretary Sencer Abraham, who’s energy credentials were slim. At DOE, according to his official PUCT biography, he founded and led DOE’s Office of Electricity.
At the PUCT meeting, Rickerson also acknowledged that ERCOT doesn’t seem to have a firm grip on just how much reserve generating capacity margin it has, although its system has been severely challenged both in the winter of 2021 and again this summer. Fox reported, “Officials said they might not have had as many reserves in the tank as they thought. ‘We are looking for why it might not have been accurate,’ Rickerson said. ‘There are several possible reasons, but we’re waiting to see what that report says before we speculate what caused that.’”
ERCOT’s near miss on a grid collapse also caused a temporary increase in pollution from its functioning fossil generation. ERCOT said that when it declared the second emergency state, it contacted the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for permission to exceed its air pollution limits under its state permits, which was granted. The next morning, Sept. 7, ERCOT asked the state air regulators to extend the permit relaxation for that day and Sept. 8, which was also granted.
ERCOT on Sept. 7 also contacted the U.S. Department of Energy “to inquire about the possibility of securing an order under Federal Power Act” to “allow specific generating facilities to operate up to their maximum output levels for a designated period of time, notwithstanding air quality or other permit limitations.” ERCOT requested “such relief for the period of 5:00 – 9:00 p.m. on September 7 and 8.” DOE granted the request.
According to a Sept. 14 ERCOT press release, “This summer, ERCOT set 10 new all-time peak demand records. ERCOT set an all-time peak demand record of 85,464 MW on August 10, 2023. ERCOT set a new unofficial September peak demand record of 84,182 MW* on Wednesday, September 8, 2023, surpassing the previous September peak of 83,911 MW set on September 7.”
ERCOT’s woes might have been less without the Texas policy of electrical autarky. Power from outside the state might have ameliorated the shortfalls, but Texas doesn’t like the flavor of non-Texas electricity.
–Kennedy Maize
Kenmaize @gmail.com
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