On July 18, electricity demand in the area served by the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) reached a new all-time hourly peak load of 72,192 megawatts during the hour starting at 4 p.m., the Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday.
That record was broken one day later, during the hour starting at 5 p.m., with load reaching 73,259 MW. The previous record of 71,110 MW occurred on Aug. 11, 2016.
Despite some sporadic power outages, Ercot managed this new record demand without any widespread loss of load to the system, EIA said.
In its seasonal assessment earlier this year, Ercot had expected it would break the its all-time daily peak load this summer, Kallanish Energy reports. While the assessment projected a new peak 1,600 MW higher than the previous record set in 2016, the actual load record set on July 19 was roughly 2,100 MW higher than the 2016 peak.
Recent coal power plant retirements and increased summer electricity demand have reduced the current reserve margins in Ercot, EIA found. This summer, Ercot estimated a reserve margin of 10.9% of peak demand, which is lower than the planned reserve margin for Ercot of 13.8%, and lower than the 15% reserve margin recommended by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) for systems that predominately use thermal generation, such as Ercot.
Reserve margins reflect the amount of excess available generating capacity as a percentage of total capacity at projected peak system demand.
https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/ercot-surpasses-all-time-peak-hourly-load-in-july/
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