Texas Cold Snap Deepens, But Electrical Grid Holds Steady

(Bloomberg) -- A bitter cold blast is gripping Texas in the wake of a winter storm, but the state's power grid is managing to keep up with demand as residents crank up heaters.

Shortly before sunrise in Dallas, it was 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-7 degrees Celsius). Midland, in the oil- and gas-rich Permian basin, was 10. Highs will only be in the 30s.

“That's a solid 20 degrees below average,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center.

Those temperatures aren't as extreme as last year's deep freeze that triggered sprawling blackouts and left more than 200 people dead. But they're enough to make power demand surge across the state -- albeit at lower levels than officials initially expected. Critics have warned for months that grid managers and utilities haven't done enough to winterize the system, while Governor Greg Abbott and other politicians have tried to reassure Texans the state is ready. 

Demand for electricity peaked early Friday at about 66.7 gigawatts at about 8 a.m. local time, and the state had about 82.2 gigawatts of generating capacity available. That peak is significantly lower than the 75.6 gigawatts that officials had forecast on Thursday, which would have been an all-time record for the state.  

Typically, a gigawatt is enough to power about 200,000 Texas homes.

Outages have so struck only a few pockets of the sprawling state by early Friday, with about 17,000 homes and bussinesses without power at 6:30 a.m. local time, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks utility outage data.

“These are localized outages that are not related to system-wide reliability issues,” Peter Lake, chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, said at a media briefing Thursday. “The grid remains strong, reliable, and it is performing well in this winter-weather event.”

Natural gas has continued to flow through the pipelines that feed many of the state's power plants, with limited disruptions. And wind turbines, whose poor performance during last year's deep freeze has become the focus of Abbott's scorn, supplied far more power than expected, keeping electric heaters humming.

Abbott said Thursday the system was prepared. “The Texas power grid is the most reliable and resilient it's ever been,” he said at a press conference.

See: Texas Had All Year to Prep for Cold, and It's Not Ready  

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