ERCOT Claims Restoring Power Is #1 Priority

SAN ANGELO, TX -- The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has released a new update on the power restoration efforts currently underway.

According to ERCOT, overnight the agency restored approximately 3,500 MW of load which impacts roughly 700,000 households.

"We know millions of people are suffering," said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness. "We have no other priority than getting them electricity. No other priority."

Some of the power restorations were lost when the Midwest went into a power emergency and ERCOT was no longer able to import approximately 600 MW.

But ERCOT also continues load shedding and as of Wednesday morning, utility companies were instructed to reduce 14,000 MW of load representing around 2.8 million households.

"Although we’ve reconnected more consumers back to the grid, the aggregate energy consumption of customers (those recently turned back on and those already on) is actually lower this morning compared to yesterday because it’s less cold," said ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin. "However, we are anticipating another cold front this evening which could increase the demand. The ability to restore more power is contingent on more generation coming back online."

According to ERCOT, since the winter storm hit Texas on Monday approximately 185 generating units have tripped offline for one reason or another. This led to approximately 46,000 MW of generation being forced off the system -- of that, 28,000 MW is thermal and 18,000 MW is wind and solar.

Some factors include frozen wind turbines, limited gas supplies, low gas pressure, and frozen instrumentation.