Thread by @douglewinenergy

Yesterday, w/ no media availability or even press release, ERCOT released its Capacity, Demand & Reserves (CDR) report. As has been a pattern lately, the communications with the public about issues of widespread conern is sorely lacking. #txlge 1/🧵

kvue.com/article/news/l…

Just this week, ERCOT CEO Brad Jones, in an article about political interference at ERCOT, said releasing a similar report (the Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy, or SARA) in the same way was a "mistake." But nothing seems to have changed. 2/
texastribune.org/2021/12/28/tex…

The difference betw than the SARA & CDR is that the SARA looks at the upcoming season while the CDR looks several years out.

3 main takeaways:
(1) absent changes, these reports aren't useful
(2) climate change isn't considered
(3) renewables are increasing reliability
3/

All CDRs in recent memory showed plenty of capacity. This one is no exception. Reserve margins (the amount of capacity in excess of demand) is high. But these reports are for normal temps. To say we have enough power in normal weather is not helpful.
4/

Highest winter peak demand in the forecast for the next 5 years is ~10% lower than February. As I told @jdavidgoodman, we "should at least plan for a winter as bad as the last one. And why do we assume that we could never have a winter worse than 2021?”

nytimes.com/2021/12/23/us/…

What matters is if we have enough in times of extreme heat or cold, droughts, etc. If these reports don't take into account extremes, they're mostly useless. It's time to change the SARA and CDRs to be more honest about our vulnerabilities.
#energytwitter 6/

Isn't this what planning is all about? Anyone can plan for normal conditions. The point is to be prepared for the high impact, low/medium frequency events that can wreak havoc on society, communities, and people. The CDR doesn't do that.
7/

And again, no mention of climate change. What if Texas gets a heatwave like the Pacific NW had last summer? It was 116F in Portland. Could we see 120+? Would we have enough power? Would thermal plants have water to operate? No mention of anything like this in the report. 8/

Back in Feb, I told @TPRNews: “We really need to, as a state, get serious about planning ahead for #climatechange. People have always thought about it as being something that's going to affect the next generation... [but] It's happening right now.”
9/
tpr.org/2021-12-30/tpr…

Some will say that's not what this report is about. OK, then which report deals with extremes and prepares for #climatechange? The public has a right to now how well ERCOT, PUCT, & state government are prepared for extremes. So where's that report?
#txlege #txenergy 10/

So what's in the CDR? Most of the written text is on p. 12) & the most important spreadsheets are p. 13 & 28

ERCOT now has 8+GW of solar with 2+GW more coming before the summer. By July, we'll have 10.3GW (!) of solar. 11/
#energytwitter #txlege
ercot.com/files/docs/202…

But it gets better. By summer of 2023, the number rises to 25GW of solar. California has about 14GW.

NOTE: these are projections. Actions taken by the PUCT could slow this down or speed this up. Right now, regulatory uncertainty could be slowing down solar devleopment. 12/

"The Planning Reserve Margin for summer '22 is forecasted to be 23.9%. This is 4.9% lower than the 28.8% margin for summer '22 reported in the May '21 CDR. This decrease is due mainly to delays of planned projects..." Likely a mix of supply chain probs & regulatory uncertainty.

This reserve margin (again, the buffer of generation in excess of demand in normal conditions) rises to 39.4% summer of '23 and 41.7% in summer '24, almost enitrely bc of #solar.
#energytwitter 14/

The other big story in the CDR is #energyefficiency. Even with programs 80% lower than the average state, and even with us realizing about ~10-15% of economically efficient savings, EE lowers demand by 2.8GW in '22 rising to 4.5GW by '26.
#txlege 15/

ERCOT is 400MW of #energyefficiency per year (not including demand response, note "load management" is on a different line). We can and should be achieving much more, especially if we are going to be ready for the extreme weather this report fails to contemplate. 16/

Other quick things:
- storage is not counted. peak average capacity contribution is 0 though ERCOT says we should have 1.5GW by this summer.
- ERCOT says we have 351MW of rooftop solar rising by about 150MW/yr & we have 578MW distributed diesel/NG (see p. 42)
17/

If you see other things in the CDR, let me know & I'll retweet.

Again, we need to see ERCOT start to take into account extreme weather & high impact events. We are actively heating the planet. This needs to be in our planning or we'll be unprepared.
#txlege #txenergy

18/End 🧵

Also, it makes no sense to count gas/coal capacity at 100%. In Feb., we had 50% of gas capacity, 40% coal & 25% nuke offline for extended periods. Even in April & October, 20+% of gas capacity was offline. Thanks
@marginalreturns for flagging this #txlege

https://twitter.com/marginalreturns/status/1476583040189087745?s=20