ERCOT Expects To Come Out Of Electricity 'Emergency Conditions' Later Friday Morning
AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM) — After some four days of many Texans living in the dark and cold, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) announced that it expects to come out of emergency conditions Friday morning.
"There is enough generation on the electric system to allow us to begin to return to more normal operating conditions," said Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin.
No additional outages were needed overnight to keep power supply and electric demand in balance, and only a few generating units tripped.
Electric utilities continue to address remaining customer outages. Customers should contact their electric provider if they are without power.
Grid conditions are improving, and rotating outages are ending. Conservation is still critical. 09:07:00 190221
— ERCOT (@ERCOT_ISO) February 19, 2021
Customers that are without power likely fall into one of three categories:
- Areas out due to ice storm damage on the distribution system
- Areas that were taken out of service due to the energy emergency load shed that need to be restored manually (i.e., sending a crew to the location to reenergize the line)
- Large industrial facilities that voluntarily went offline to help during this energy emergency
ERCOT said that as of 7:30 Friday morning, approximately 34,000 MW of generation remains on forced outage due to this winter weather event. Of that, nearly 20,000 MW is thermal generation and the rest is wind and solar.