Texas Power Failure: The Demand

Story
Published on 22 February 2021

Helen Kou
Analyst, Decentralized Energy

Executive Summary

It’s the story everyone in the U.S. – and much of the world – is talking about. A winter
storm sent temperatures plummeting in Texas, resulting in snow, ice and blackouts
that left millions fending off the cold without power. The problems resulted from
both unforeseen demand levels and supply failures across the Electric Reliability
Council of Texas (Ercot) power system. In this piece we examine the first of these
issues and explore various options to better manage the changing nature of Texas’
power demand.

By the Numbers

1.4°F (-17°C)
Average perceived temperature in Texas on February 15th 2021

16.5GW
Highest amount of load dropped during the outage

30%
Difference between Ercot’s expected winter peak and the real peak during the storm (which
load cutoffs prevented from materializing)
 Ercot demand forecasts

Source: Ercot, BloombergNEF

Note: The expected winter peak demand forecast comes from Ercot’s SARA 2020/2021
report. Day ahead forecasts reflect demand expectations 24-hours before real time.
*The Feb. 16 peak demand did not materialize after Ercot initiated rolling outages.

A winter storm sent Texas temperatures plummeting far below freezing, causing
households to crank up their electric heaters – pushing demand far beyond worst-case
scenarios. As demand sustained beyond forecasted winter peak levels, power supply systems
started to fail. At the worst point, over 40% of power supply was forced offline by treacherous
freezing weather, exacerbated by the fact that the generation fleet was simply not ready for
summer-level demand to appear in the middle of winter.

The nature of Ercot power demand is fundamentally shifting, due to an increase in electric
heating. Both average winter load and peak demand during winter months have been rising,
reflecting the growth in electrified heat and population.

Load-shifting resources – like thermal storage, battery storage or demand response – would
have struggled to prevent a crisis of this length. While sales of backup generators may rise,
even these technologies would struggle to sustain power over the full duration or could face
refueling challenges during a blackout event like the one in Texas.

The changes to Texas’ power system in response to the outages could be widespread.
Better forecasting and planning for peak demand are key as Texas electrifies heat and climate
 g p g p y

change increases the likelihood of more extreme weather events of this nature.

(Corrects figures on use of electricity for heating on Page 4 and in Figure 7. A previous
version of this report corrected Ercot average demand figure on Page 2.)