Much of the state of Texas will be hit with not one but two cold fronts in the next two weeks, and that could potentially impact Texas’ power grid operation, Meteorologist Tom Hale says.
Beginning Thursday through the weekend, Hale said North Texans should expect temperatures about 15 degrees below normal for this time of year. He said we will see a brief warm-up on Monday, but then will be hit with a second arctic blast that will drop temperatures on Friday and keep them there through the holiday and beyond.
And it won’t just be North Texans, according to weather models, some areas of Texas will see single-digit lows and high temperatures hovering just at the freezing mark, Hale said.
The cold fronts come about a week after officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, and members of the state’s Public Utility Commission testified in Austin on changes made to the electric grid after 2021’s state-wide power outage.
After much of the state lost electricity for days following a grid failure, state lawmakers gave ERCOT and the PUC several mandated changes in order to prevent a catastrophe like that from ever happening again. But, as PUC Chairman Peter Lake testified to lawmakers, they’re so understaffed that they can’t make the necessary improvements.
“The lack of resources, as you all have identified, in the Sunset Commission has identified has made implementing all of the tasks y’all gave us very, very difficult,” Lake said.
In its Winter Outlook, released last month, ERCOT officials said the grid produces more energy on a given day than it did back in 2021, meaning that it is in better shape. However, they admitted that in “extreme conditions” a repeat failure of the power grid might still be a possibility statewide.
ERCOT and the PUC said if they see the grid inching toward a place of weakness, they’ll act faster to try and keep everyone online. They say in order to do that, they’ll initiate rolling blackouts statewide to prevent a total grid collapse.
For the latest on the forecast, click here.
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