AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- Texas' electric grid operator asked residents and businesses to conserve electric power Tuesday afternoon and evening, as a combination of generation outages and high electric demand brought electric reserves dangerously close to emergency levels.
Officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas issued the call for conservation around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, which lasted for about four hours.
Roughly one fourth of the state's generating capacity, or about 32,000 megawatts, was offline Tuesday, much of it for pre-summer maintenance ERCOT officials say is typical in the month of April.
A stalled cold front draped across the state was also responsible for higher than forecasted demand on the grid, officials said.
Despite the conservation request, officials said it was highly unlikely that outages would have become necessary. Declaring an energy emergency allows ERCOT operators to access additional resources and reserves that are otherwise not available to them.
Just two months ago, ERCOT garnered national attention for massive power outages across the state as it ordered utility providers to shed load during February's deadly winter storm.