When Do The Rolling Blackouts Start In Texas?
By Ginny Reese
July 14, 2022
Some Texans have been panicking as the weather fluctuates to extreme temperatures. And since the state experienced widespread blackouts in February of 2021 from the Arctic freeze, tons of people are frantically checking the ERCOT web dashboard and app every day to keep a check on the state's energy use.
My San Antonio reported that ERCOT has become a household name since last year's outages. And the website is now explaining how to see if and when the rolling blackouts could happen again.
According to My San Antonio, there are three key indicators on the ERCOT dashboard: supply, demand, and the grid's current operating reserves.
But what people really come for are the levels of emergency, represented by three colors. Level one is orange and represents that the operating reserves are below 2,300 and can't recover within 30 minutes.
Level two is red and represents operating reserves below 1,750 megawatts. At this level ERCOT can interrupt services for large industrial consumers who have agreed to such emergency conditions.
Level three is black, which represents reserves under 1,000 megawatts. ERCOT institutes rolling blackouts at this stage, which the company says it does as a last resort.
Click here to learn more about how to read and understand the dashboard.
Click here to check the ERCOT web dashboard.
If power plants drop, you'll see it there. If PRC drops <3000MW reserves will typically be deployed. If it drops <2300MW, we're in "emergency conditions." Once it's <1000MW, they'll start rolling outages. #txenergy #energytwitter #txlege pic.twitter.com/2D3F9tRg7K
— Doug Lewin (@douglewinenergy) July 12, 2022