The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday that it expects the regional grid to have sufficient generating capacity this coming spring and summer, even in the most dire scenarios.
ERCOT said in its final assessment of spring 2016 resource adequacy that it expects the region's springtime demand to peak in May, the last month in Texas's spring, at 58,279 MW.
"That's up 700 MW from the preliminary [spring assessment] released last November," Pete Warnken, ERCOT's manager of resource adequacy, said during a conference call.
The grid operator said that it expects as much as 79,359 MW of capacity to be available during the spring, and that with an expected 9,482 MW of maintenance and forced outages in May it should have 11,598 MW of capacity available for operating reserves that month -- about five times the 2,300 MW of operating reserves considered minimally acceptable.
ERCOT said its spring peak-demand forecast "is based on expected weather conditions similar to those that occurred in May 2006, a hotter-than-normal month."
The assessment's May unit outage forecast of 9,482 MW is based on historical outage data since the start of ERCOT's nodal market in 2010, it said.
SUMMER
In its preliminary assessment of summer 2016 resource adequacy, ERCOT said it expects system-wide demand to peak at 70,588 MW this summer, "based on current expectations for average weather."
It noted that summer peak load forecast in the final summer 2016 assessment, to be released in May, will reflect the weather conditions expected at that time.
ERCOT expects as much as 79,354 MW of capacity to be available during the summer, with an expected 3,245 MW of maintenance and forced outages during the summer months. It expects to have 5,521 MW of capacity available for operating reserves during the peak, more than the 2,300 MW of operating reserves considered minimally acceptable.
Under an "extreme load/extreme generation outages" scenario designed to reflect the limits of what is possible this summer, ERCOT said that if peak demand was 2,754 MW higher than the 70,588 MW peak it expects -- and with 5,076 MW of maintenance and forced outages -- it would have only 936 MW of operating reserves available during the peak.
LOW WIND SCENARIO
For the first time, ERCOT also included another summertime scenario: one that combines an extreme peak load event with low wind output.
"The expected summer peak capacity for wind is 2,879 MW, equivalent to a 17.3% capacity contribution based on contributions of 12% for non-coastal wind resources and 55% for coastal wind resources," it said. "In contrast, the extreme peak load/low wind scenario includes wind peak capacity of 679 MW, equivalent to a 4.1% summer peak capacity contribution."
ERCOT said it expects 1,068 MW of new natural gas-fired capacity to be online for the summer season. The new capacity includes 388 MW of combustion turbine capacity NRG Energy has been installing at its P.H. Robinson station in Galveston County; 225 MW of reciprocating internal combustion engine capacity that South Texas Electric Cooperative has been building in Hidalgo County; and two 202-MW CTs that Golden Spread Electric Cooperative has been constructing at its Elk station near Abernathy.
ERCOT also expects 723 MW of new wind capacity "with a summer peak capacity contribution of 174 MW" to come online by June 1.
