Texans Asked to Conserve Electricity as Grid Nears the Brink

(Bloomberg) -- Texas residents and businesses, including the biggest names in oil, autos and technology, are being asked to conserve electricity Monday afternoon during a heat wave that’s expected to push the state’s grid near its breaking point.

The call for conservation lasts from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., and no system-wide outages are expected for now, said the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the main grid operator. Compounding the record demand are low wind speeds, which are keeping the state’s massive fleet of turbines at less than 10% of their potential output.

Texas Power Use Tops All-Time Record as Heat Bakes State 

The tightest hour Monday is expected to be from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., when the amount of available generating capacity is seen at just 0.6% above anticipated demand, according to ERCOT data.

ERCOT and state regulators asked industrial power users to prepare to curtail their usage voluntarily, especially when prices surge, said Katie Coleman, an attorney for the Texas Association of Manufacturers, who described the communication as typical for summertime events.

“There have been no directives for any industrials to curtail involuntarily,” she said.

The biggest companies operating in Texas include Exxon Mobil Corp., Tesla Inc., Apple Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc., and two Major League Baseball teams currently playing their seasons. The NASA Johnson Space Center is in Houston.

Texas’s power grid remains under scrutiny more than a year after the system collapsed during a winter storm, leaving much of the state without power for days. More than 240 people died, and the true economic costs topped $50 billion. Officials enacted a raft of reforms following the crisis, but critics warn the system remains vulnerable.

(Updates throughout with details on businesses, grid outage in 2021.)

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