Officials with the Public Utility Commission say power plants across the state have taken steps to prepare for the winter storm now covering most of north Texas. Several of those steps were mandated by the state legislature after last year's wide-spread power outages.
"We know that the reforms we have put into place over these last few months ensure that our grid is reliable and ready for this winter weather event," said PUC Chairman Peter Lake.
Many of last year's long-lasting outages were caused by power plants going off-line at the same time demand for electricity surged across the state.
"Our generating fleet has procured extra fuel...coal, gas, diesel and fuel oil...on site at the generators, and crews have been pre-positioned at generators to ensure any problems arise can be quickly addressed," said Lake. "Our transmission system also is pre-positioning crews to ensure that any of the ice-related incidents we might expect can be addressed quickly."
Officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas are predicting a surge in demand during the storm, but are confident that the state will have enough capacity to meet it.
"We have about 71,000 megawatts of expected load, which will be a record for ERCOT during the winter," said ERCOT Interim President Brad Jones. "But at the same time we have 86,000 megawatts of available generation. Some of that is coming from the western part of the country - over 10,000 megawatts of wind that we're getting out of the western part of the country for both Thursday and Friday."
The PUC warns that some neighborhoods across the state could still experience local outages due to normal winter-weather problems.
"Squirrels, tree branches, ice on wires are local issues that can be addressed by your local transmission company," said PUC Chairman Peter Lake.
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