TEXAS – Officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and the Public Utility Commission discussed the readiness of the Texas power grid for the 2022 summer season on Tuesday.
PUC Chairman Peter Lake and ERCOT CEO Brad Jones highlighted the ongoing impacts of landmark grid reliability and electricity market reforms passed by the Texas Legislature, which was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, and implemented by the two energy companies.
“We are better prepared than we have ever been before. We can say with absolute confidence to Texans, the lights will stay on this summer,” said Peter Lake, Public Utility Commission of Texas Chairman.
Texas now requires the weatherization of natural gas, power generation and transmission facilities so that they can handle extreme weather. The Texas Railroad Commission and ERCOT are required to inspect them.
“We’re ensuring that ERCOT prioritizes those generators to make sure that the ones that run when we need them the most are in the front of the line for maintenance outages so all of our generator fleets are ready for this coming summer, Lake said.
In it’s Seasonal Assessment Report, ERCOT said it expects to have enough power to meet the peak demands during the upcoming summer season from June through September. ERCOT expects a summer peak demand of 77,317 Megawatts and anticipates that there will be 91,392 Megawatts of capacity available to cover that.
An overview of ERCOT’s Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy and Capacity, Demand and Reserves reports were also provided during the news conference.
Watch the full press conference below: