Partners try to prevent power blackouts

ROUND ROCK, Texas (KXAN) - According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Monday of this week marked the fourth day this summer that Texans set new records for power consumption.

The council, better known as ERCOT , operates the grid that serves 75 percent of the deregulated electric market in the state. Fortunately, the spikes in usage did not reach levels that could cause brownouts or blackouts on the grid, but it has happened.

"In the last 20 years, we've had two situations which have led to a blackout situation," said Gillan Taddune, a regional director for the energy management company, EnerNOC . "One was in the winter and the other was in the springtime. We had some unusually hot weather and there were some power plants that had been taken off line for just general system maintenance, which was scheduled. But we hadn't anticipated that hot weather. So that led to a system emergency in which some rolling blackouts did happen."

After those incidents, the Texas Public Utility Commission and ERCOT established a program to warn power users of potential blackouts and EnerNOC, a public traded, for-profit company, came up with ways to help. EnerNOC customers sign up to voluntarily reduce energy usage when ERCOT warns of dangerously peaking power demand.

"We have hundreds of companies signed up in Austin, Dallas, Houston," Taddune said. "We have hospitals; we have data centers; we have manufacturing companies."

Among them, is the Round Rock water utility, which will officially join the effort Oct. 1.

"Operating a water plant; a lot of pumping to distribute the water into the system," said Round Rock Utilities director Michael Thane. "When we get the call that there's a potential brownout on its way, we can cut some pumps off. We can reduce some of our power demand on the grid for that short period of time."

Thane is quick to point out that such a curtailment would not interfere with the city's drinking water supply.

"We're never going to put our water system in jeopardy, but we feel confident for short periods of time, called upon, we can do our part to help reduce the demand on the grid," he said.

"So the Round Rock water utility, combined with all those other companies and organizations, could, in a matter of just minutes, reduce the demand on the electric grid enough to stop a blackout in its tracks and make some money in the process.

"I think that they (Round Rock) would get paid, right now, about $20,000 to $30,000 for being on standby for a year in the program, Taddune said. "They'd probably get a few thousand dollars more for the energy (curtailment)."

That, of course, helps the utility keep costs and rates down. And combined with the efforts of all the other EnerNOC clients around the country, Round Rock's participation in the " Demand Response" program , as it is known, helps reduce the need for more power plants and the pollution they produce.

Meanwhile, all of us can rest easy, blessed by an abundance of reliable, powerful energy.