HOUSTON – Ahead of next week’s hard freeze, we want to help you understand how you can easily monitor the power grid from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
ERCOT, which manages the state’s main power grid, created a dashboard where residents can track its current conditions and usage.
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Click here to watch the grids in real-time
The dashboard has timestamps so that you can see when the information was last updated.
In the image below, the red circle identifies where you can look on each chart to find the timestamp.
The red arrow points to the button to click to expand each featured item when you are on the dashboard.
An explanation of the data, including what the numbers and lines mean for each chart, can be found by clicking “Full View”.
The current Grid Conditions meter is color-coded with green indicating normal conditions.
Yellow indicates energy conservation is required. Orange, red, and black correlate to Energy Emergency Levels 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Controlled outages are part of level 3.
What happens when ERCOT goes into Emergency Mode?
When the electric supply can’t be balanced, that’s when things will change.
⚠️EMERGENCY LEVEL ONE⚠️
When the reserves hit 2,500, that’s an indication that things are getting serious. If the operating reserves drop below 2,500 megawatts and are not expected to recover within 30 minutes, ERCOT would issue an emergency level one alert, meaning there is a risk of controlled outages.
⚠️EMERGENCY LEVEL TWO⚠️
Another number to watch for is 2,000 megawatts... anything less would trigger an energy emergency level 2, which means ERCOT could reduce demand on the system by interrupting power from large industrial customers who’ve contractually agreed to have their electricity turned off during an emergency.
⚠️EMERGENCY LEVEL THREE⚠️
When reserves drop below 1,500 megawatts, that would take us to an emergency level 3, and we would be looking at controlled, rotating outages. More prolonged outages may also be necessary to balance supply and demand on the grid.
To learn more, you can find a description for each level under the “Full View” on this chart.
ERCOT Records
ERCOT’s all time record demand was 85,508 MW on August 10, 2023. Now, it’s predicting record demand on January 16, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.. ERCOT is forecasting for 85,843 MW.
Even though ERCOT is predicting for record demand, the forecast predicts 2,881 MW of reserve.
The first alert level threshold isn’t reached until ERCOT’s operating reserves drop below 2,500 MW and are expected to remain below that level for at least 30 minutes.
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