The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is issuing a "weather watch" for the first part of next week. ERCOT says the state set a record for energy use Thursday, reaching 81,406 MW in demand; the agency forecast another record for demand Friday, reaching around 83,000 MW.
The forecast is continuously updated on the ERCOT website. Despite the record forecast, ERCOT expected capacity to remain about 10,000 MW higher.
A weather watch is one step above normal grid conditions but short of a call for voluntary conservation. ERCOT says it issues the watches three to five days before it expects a period of high demand. During a weather watch, ERCOT says it watches conditions more closely and urges people to start looking at ways to save energy.
ERCOT has a list of tips to reduce energy use here.
If demand continues to increase,the next step for ERCOT beyond a weather watch is a voluntary conservation notice. During a voluntary conservation notice, ERCOT asks people and local governments to conserve power during a specific window of time.
If the voluntary conservation notice does not provide enough of a margin, ERCOT then goes through three stages of "Energy Emergency Alert." The third stage is rolling blackouts.
Friday afternoon, ERCOT said the largest amount of power generation was coming from natural gas, which provided 48% of the supply. Solar ranked second at 16%, coal was third at 14.7% and wind was fourth at 14.4%.
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