HOUSTON – Houston, we hear your pain and your concerns.
This year alone, some Houstonians were left without power and air conditioning for days on end not once, but twice. First with the May derecho and then again in July with Hurricane Beryl.
Needless to say, it’s been a trying year.
Rightfully so, some people are a little nervous or borderline anxious about the “what ifs” when it comes to their electricity.
Whether it’s CenterPoint’s drive to restore trust in their customers to the ERCOT grid or will there be enough electricity supply to power all of our homes, there are real thoughts on the minds of Houstonians.
But the problem is - some people might be getting bad information or be worrying about the wrong thing.
Demand vs. Capacity
There’s been a lot of talk about an all-time record amount of power usage on the ERCOT grid, which manages how electricity is distributed throughout most of Texas.
The record was set on August 10, 2023 when Texans used 85,508 MW (megawatts) of electricity.
We could very well break that record this year.
But here’s the thing - it doesn’t matter.
As Texas continues to grow and our climate warms, we will always demand more and more power, continuously breaking the previous record.
What you should focus on is the Committed Capacity and the Current Demand. The capacity is how much electricity in the grid that we can use while the demand is what we’re currently using.
As long as the demand doesn’t come close to the capacity, we should be in good shape, regardless of whether or not we reach the all-time demand record.
Is The Infrastructure Healed?
That’s a little bit of a different story.
CenterPoint Energy is responsible for handling the transmission and distribution lines in the Houston area.
They took not one, but two big wallops by Mother Nature.
The punches keep coming from Houstonians, who are demanding the company do better after being stranded without power and AC for days on end during the May derecho and Hurricane Beryl.
According to CenterPoint, they’re almost halfway to their goal of making their system more resilient to storms in the immediate future.
They’re making progress with trimming vegetation, replacing poles with newer, stronger poles and “hardening” distribution lines. However, there’s still work to be done.
Don’t Be A Part Of The Problem
There are things you and I can do to help keep Texas out of a situation that would require rolling blackouts.
We’re talking about the easy things that you’ve probably heard so many times that it’s numb to you.
- Raising the temperature in your house, just for a few hours
- Holding off on using big power-hungry appliances
- Turning off lights when you’re not using them