According to unofficial figures from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s power grid operator, Texans needed a record amount of electricity to cool off Tuesday night as temperatures exceeded three degrees Celsius across much of the state.
According to ERCOT spokeswoman Trudi Webster, electricity demand reached 85,559 megawatts at 5 p.m., surpassing the previous record of 85,508 megawatts set in August 2023. One megawatt can power 250 Texas homes on the hottest summer days.
ERCOT is responsible for coordinating the flow of electricity across the state, ensuring that electricity supply meets demand at all times. The new record is unofficial until final settlement occurs in the wholesale electricity market, which is also managed by ERCOT.
According to the ERCOT dashboard, electricity demand on Wednesday was expected to remain below 84,000 megawatts, although the gap between supply and demand narrows around 8 p.m. as solar generation declines as the sun sets. That gap was even smaller on Tuesday, and ERCOT still had enough supply to meet demand without having to ask Texans to conserve electricity.
ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said Tuesday that the grid operator has had a “very different experience” operating the grid this summer than last summer, when its system came closest to outages since the infamous 2021 freeze. That’s in part because the weather was milder. Last year, ERCOT issued 11 requests for Texans to conserve electricity as weeks of record-breaking heat swept through the state.
In addition, more than 15 gigawatts of electricity have been connected to the grid since last year, including 1.7 gigawatts of wind power, 8.8 gigawatts of solar energy, 4.8 gigawatts of battery storage and 164 megawatts of gas. During the record hour on Tuesday, natural gas power plants covered more than 50 percent of electricity demand, while solar energy provided more than 20 percent.
As solar resources grow exponentially on the Texas power grid, the time of greatest electricity demand is no longer the time of highest risk for potential outages. That time has shifted to the early evening, when the sun is setting and wind energy production is not yet fully ramping up. Battery storage facilities, which can store electricity to be discharged immediately when it is needed most, have flooded Texas to fill this new gap. In fact, battery storage was supplying a record 3,927 megawatts of power to the grid around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, a nearly 20% increase over the previous record set just the day before.
