An electric generator field is seen at the Austin Energy/Sand Hill Energy Center on June 20, 2023, in Austin, Texas amid extreme hot temperatures in the state. A former power official has said "aggressive" steps must be taken to reduce electricity demands during summer.
BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES
PUBLISHED 7/18/23 AT 5:58 AM EDT
Texas' electricity grid is "getting harder and harder every year to operate" as the average temperature in the state in the summer is rising along with the population, a former public utilities official has said.
Speaking to Dallas radio station KRLD on Monday, Alison Silverstein, an electricity reliability consultant and former adviser to the chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Texas, called for "aggressive" steps to reduce demand, reported to be the primary driver of power cuts.
She contrasted the outages seen in recent winters—caused by issues with production or transmission—with those during the summer, which tended to be as a result of demand outpacing supply as residents tried to stave off the effects of the heat.
It came as Texans have endured searingly hot weather since June, and the state is currently in a prolonged heatwave with temperatures consistently above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, placing pressure on the electricity grid.
The state's grid has been a matter of scrutiny since February 2021, when a winter storm killed 246 people and left millions without power. But, like other grids facing up to more regular extreme weather events, summer heat is also a concern.
"Since Texas temperatures have risen every summer for the last 30 years, and [the] Texas' population has risen every year for the last 30 years, we should expect that there will be a lot more calls for conservation because it's getting harder and harder every year to operate the grid," Silverstein said.
An Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) spokesperson told Newsweek that it will "continue to operate the grid conservatively, bringing generating resources online early to mitigate sudden changes in generation or demand."
Noting that the state's grid operator had already managed to break its own unofficial July peak capacity, they added that there could be "tight grid conditions periodically this summer."
"The grid is operating under normal conditions," the spokesperson said. "ERCOT has not issued a Voluntary Conservation Notice and is not asking Texans to conserve energy at this time."
According to the U.S. Census, Texas' population grew 43.4 percent between 2000 and 2022, while National Centers for Environmental Information data shows the average July temperature has been above the historic mean for seven of the past eight years. July 2022 recorded an average of 87.1 degrees Fahrenheit—beating the previous record set in 2011.
Silverstein said that while a lot of the rules adopted by Texas' Public Utilities Commission to reform the state's energy grid in the wake of Storm Uri—which caused 2021's outages—were targeted towards preventing a loss of supply. In hot summers, she estimated air-conditioning usage made up 50 percent of electricity demand in the state.
"The hotter it gets, the more we're all cranking the thermostat and demanding more electricity," she noted. Earlier this week, one energy provider in California called on residents to limit their air-conditioner usage at peak times.
Silverstein criticized the Texas' legislature for prioritizing energy production projects and the governor, Greg Abbott, for vetoing a measure in June which would have adopted stronger energy efficiency standards for new-build homes in the state, reducing electricity demand before people move in.
Abbott suggested at the time he was not against the bill, but wanted the legislature to prioritize property tax cuts that would make homeowning easier. The bill, SB 2453, would have saved residents $174 a year on utilities, a 2021 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study found.
Silverstein characterized her reaction to this move as "extreme disappointment," but said that the bill was "only one of the things that should have been done" and that it "would have done nothing to fix the house that you're sitting in today."
She added: "Instead of just trying to fix supply, we need to be much smarter and aggressive about fixing demand."
Newsweek approached the office of the Texas governor via email for comment on Tuesday.
"We're going on 30 million people here. Summers are getting hotter, winters are getting colder; cold snaps are longer, heatwaves are longer," Nathan Johnson, a Democratic state senator, told the radio channel.
"People are consuming more power to stay warm and to stay cool and, meanwhile, we have high energy demand industries here including petrochemical refineries[...] semiconductor manufacturing, automobile manufacturing—these things draw a ton of power.
"So we have a steeply increasing population, we have a steeply increasing demand on our electricity from industrial processes—it would be political negligence to not look at those curves and anticipate for the power that we're going to need."
However, he noted that answering questions about capacity and generation were "super hard," with experts offering conflicting opinions that posed a "huge challenge" for legislators.
Texas has been bringing more energy production online in recent years, from a diverse range of sources. The state has a growing solar and wind industry that is anticipated to account for nearly half of its energy needs in 2035, and has the second largest-battery storage capacity of all states.
Update 07/26/23, 3:30 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from an ERCOT spokesperson.
