Texas Grid ‘Well Prepared’ for Demand From Storm, Governor Says

(Bloomberg) -- The Texas grid operator is ready to handle any increased energy demand due to the winter storm that's set to strike the U.S. state this week, Governor Greg Abbott said.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is “well prepared for conditions as they currently stand, but remains flexible in order to be responsive to power demand needs,” Abbott, 64, said during a Tuesday press conference in Austin, Texas. The highest demand for power from the grid will be Friday morning, he said.

“Ercot will have an excess of 15,000 megawatts of power available, even at the time of highest demand,” he said.

A massive storm set to sweep the central U.S. has left nearly two-thirds of Texas under winter-storm watches and weather advisories, as temperatures are set to plummet from highs in the upper 60s Fahrenheit (20 Celsius) on Tuesday to 14 degrees in Dallas Thursday night and 10 in Midland. A wide area of Texas, including Dallas and Fort Worth, are expected to get a mix of ice and snow, according to the National Weather Service.

The weather currently looks less likely to lead to a repeat of the cold snap a year ago that took down scores of power plants, triggering catastrophic blackouts that left more than 200 people dead.

Texas Had All Year to Prep for Winter, and It's Still Not Ready

Still, the storm may test whether Abbott and Republican lawmakers have done enough to shore up the electric grid, just weeks before his party's primary vote. The governor has promised Texans that the “lights will stay on” this winter, citing legislation he signed over the summer that required the grid operator to increase reserve capacity and made it easier for industrial users to get paid to reduce their consumption.

“We are ready for this storm,” Brad Jones, Ercot's interim president and chief executive officer, said at the conference. “We'll be prepared for this. We have about 71,000 megawatts of expected load, which will be a record for Ercot during the winter.”