Thread by @douglewinenergy

First off, I do NOT expect outages this evening. I could be wrong but despite the graph below, w/ temps in the 40s in Houston, there shouldn't be any issues tonight.

But this highlights why storage and dispatchable demand response are needed in ERCOT right now.
#txlege
1/🧵

Demand is high bc inefficient heat is driving the peak higher than expected. Because we have very little committed, paid residential #demandresponse, and most of that peak is residential demand, there's little ERCOT can do about it. This is a policy failure. #txenergy
2/

Note that the mismatch between supply and demand is not large, and doesn't last very long. If we had more storage and more dispatchable #demandresponse, this wouldn't be an issue at all.

@maggie_glynn1 did a great job explaining this:
#energytwitter 3/
kxan.com/state-of-texas…

The @PUCTX is procuing lots of reserves. Chair Lake said he didn't know what it costs but it's likely between $500m and $1b.

Storage and #demandresponse would likely yield higher reliabillity at lower cost than old fossil plants.
#txlege #txenergy 4/

https://twitter.com/douglewinenergy/status/1494502978404950020?s=20&t=OaW7vxpW5293E-_cTPFKpA

Other things to watch for:

What happens to gas production in the Permian? As we've learned over the last year, gas is a weather dependent fuel source given the current lack of regulations. Production fell ~2Bcf/d on Feb 3 and nearly as much on Jan 2
5/

https://twitter.com/ira_joseph/status/1491557274162184195?s=20&t=4MoqdY3Z33_27skGjL0fuQ

How many thermal plants go offline? At 6am, there were 7GW offline. At 8am we're up to 9.3GW. Hopefully that doesn't go any higher. In its risk scenarios, ERCOT expects "typical" outags of 7.4GW and high outages 11.8. We're obviously in between those now.
ercot.com/mp/data-produc…

How does wind perform? Currently wind is projected to be ~6GW at peak, almost exactly what ERCOT expects in its risk scenarios.

Note that wind is coming in above forecast currently.
7/
ercot.com/files/docs/202…

Note that the extreme risk thresholds in which ERCOT would worry about high thermal outages and/or low wind were assuming demand of ~73GW so today doesn't come anywhere near that (63GW). Again, I expect no rolling outages or issues on the grid in such a minor weather event. 8/

Btw, anyone know what's happening in Waxahachie, Ellis County right now?

I'll post updates later if anything gets worse, but I don't expect that it will.
#txlege #energytwitter

9/end 🧵

Rare case where the standard gradient view shows the problem around Waxahachie better