A new ERCOT report shows major future demand on power grid. Why experts are skeptical
This month, ERCOT released its report on Capacity, Demand and Reserves for 2025 to 2029. According to a news release at the time, the report aims to give a 'snapshot' of what resources will be available and the potential demand on the grid over the next five years.
As political winds shift, Austin braces for renewable energy impact
University of Texas research scientist Joshua Rhodes said supply and demand imbalances in the report initially shocked him, until he dug deeper.
'My initial reaction was to be taken aback a little bit. The report is usually pretty boring as far as reports go,' Rhodes explained. 'Although this one, it looked pretty bad. It looked like we were going to have massive shortfalls in the next couple of years. And it's generally quite different than previous versions of the report we've seen.'
Rhodes took the numbers in the report and compared them to past figures, showing demand on the state's power grid could skyrocket from now until 2029 — seven and a half times faster than it has grown in the past.
KXAN has reported on how the growing population in Texas could impact the grid, but both Rhodes and ERCOT itself highlighted a recent change in how ERCOT forecasts this data, at the direction of state lawmakers.
In 2023, House Bill 5066 was introduced to address concerns about how the current process for building electric transmission may not keep up with demand or allow adequate advanced planning, especially for large projects such as data centers for artificial intelligence and cloud storage services or cryptocurrency mining operations.
Because of the legislation, ERCOT now considers what's known as 'unsigned load' in the forecast. According to ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas, this means the forecast 'comes directly from the transmission and distribution utilities that are talking with customers.'
Rhodes described it by saying, 'Basically, everybody who's thinking about, or roughly thinking about, connecting in a certain area — they would go to utility, and they would talk about what it looks like to get a certain amount of power at a certain location.'
He went on to say, 'Before, we wouldn't really count those loads until you know they had gotten further in the process, put some skin in the game, put some money down. But now we're kind of counting everybody, and in this new world — in this race of AI — it's a lot of people who might want to get power, and it's driving up the numbers much faster than they have in the past.'
While Rhodes acknowledged that calculating the numbers this way can help the state be more proactive in building out infrastructure, he said the change makes it hard for policy makers and researchers to 'make heads or tails' of what's going on now, to make recommendations.
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