HOUSTON – The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s main power grid, has a dashboard which allows residents to track current conditions and usage.
The timestamp of each dashboard indicates when the information was last updated, according to ERCOT’s website.
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As of Thursday night, ERCOT’s grid conditions were normal and there was enough power to meet the current demand.
In addition, the duration and severity of this week’s winter weather event is not expected to be as long or as bad as the February freeze of 2021 in which many across the state lost power in dangerously cold conditions.
Gov. Greg Abbott has made repeated assurances the state’s power grid is ready for this event.
ERCOT officials have said 99% of power plants have complied with newly implemented weatherization plans. ERCOT had not yet issued any calls for conservation as of this writing, but a watch was posted on its website back on Monday morning.
For perspective as you view the dashboard, peak demand during last year’s winter storm was 77,000 megawatts.
As of Thursday morning, ERCOT’s revised its estimated peak demand for Friday morning from 71.8K to 74.6k megawatts.
Click here to watch the grids in real-time.
In the image below captured in the 9 p.m. hour on Feb. 3, the red circle identifies where you can look on each chart to find the timestamp. The red arrow points to the button to click to expand each featured item when you are on the dashboard. An explanation of the data, including what the numbers and lines mean for each chart, can be found by clicking “Full View”.
The current Grid Conditions meter is color-coded with green indicating normal conditions as seen in the sample screenshot above.
If yellow appears on the meter, that would indicate energy conservation is requested. Orange, red, and black correlate to Energy Emergency Levels 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Controlled outages are part of level 3.
To learn more, you can find a description for each level under the “Full View” on this chart.