This is not close to over. The following items suggest we will be at or near the real time price cap of $9,000 at least through tomorrow and potentially into Friday/Weekend depending on how quickly assets can be thawed and restarted.
- The grid is still woefully undersupplied and we don’t know the extent of the damage to the power plant
- Freezing or near freezing temperatures are expected to persist for most of TX through the rest of today and tomorrow. See below for Houston/Dallas/San Antonio/Austin daily high/low.
- The damage to some assets is likely unknown and could take time to repair
- ERCOT is still in EEA 3, so all Demand Response is being deployed, massive outages are still wide spread and rolling blackouts are still in effect where possible
- PUCT order to count firm load shed volumes in the calculation of spot prices is still in place, virtually guaranteeing we will remain at the $9,000 / MWh price cap until firm load shed is no longer needed
- The Day Ahead market prices that just cleared for Thursday 2/18 are still in the $7,000 to $9,000 range
ERCOT Temperatures:
ERCOT continues to be at or near all-time winter highs with the expectation based on current temperatures that the high demand will continue through today, likely into Friday morning and potentially into the weekend. Additional generation assets are back online including the Unit #2 at South Texas Project, but supplies are still limited.
All Emergency Responsive Reserve (ERS) and Load Resource (LR) have been called to assist in lowering Peak Demand. If you look at the light green line, you can see that the Forecast Demand is expected to far exceed available capacity and reserves and that without Demand Response and Rolling Outages, demand would outpace available supply. Expectations are that LR and ERS will continue to be called for the next 24 hours in an attempt to reduce this demand.
ERCOT Settlement Point Prices continue to be at or near the $9,000 price cap.