Texas sets state record for energy demand in June

ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) - This week’s record breaking temperatures have raised concern about the Texas power grid and whether it can withstand the summer demand.

ERCOT issued a voluntary conservation alert this afternoon as Texas set a state record on Monday for energy demand in June.

ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas says the state could set a new demand record today

“I want to be clear, ERCOT is not experiencing any emergency conditions right now. Voluntary conservation is a very widely used industry tool that can help lower demand for specific periods of time. Yesterday, we broke an unofficial record-- at this point, it will be official once all the counting and calculations are done-- but yesterday we broke a June peak demand record,” said Vegas.

Representative Brooks Landgraf says it was a precautionary measure as supply is meeting demand but ERCOT is making sure they’re using every tool available to them right now.

“The grid is holding up. I think these voluntary measures that ERCOT is talking about are just to make sure that’s the case so it’s unlikely that we have any widespread outages and some of these voluntary measures can make that unlikely scenario even less likely,” said Landgraf.

Landgraf says his concern is more so the growing population that keeps causing increased demand.

“We have a lot more people who are calling Texas home who are moving here from other states and of course we’re all gonna need electricity so we have to continue to build our capacity,” said Landgraf.

After the deadly winter storm and power outage in 2021, the Texas legislature passed SB2 and SB3 to hold ERCOT more accountable..

“We are seeing the benefits of that in that we have much more efficient administration and we also have a lot better public notice. I think the fact that we have this notice that’s been issued today is as a result of some of the reforms that we’ve made because we are demanding that ERCOT be more forthright and transparent,” said Landgraf.

If you do lose power it is important to contact Oncor right away.

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