Good afternoon everybody.
I'm meteorologist Jesse Hawla
with his special update.
As many of you have seen,
ERCOT is asking everybody to
conserve power this afternoon.
We have a heat advisory in effect
and one of the reasons is of course
we've seen a very long stretch
of heat and if you look here,
this is the heat advisory
that's in effect for tomorrow.
We already have one for
pretty much the same areas.
Here's something to note here.
The highest population centers
in the entire state of Texas are
really focused in this exact area.
You've Houston.
You have San Antonio Austin,
Waco, DFW,
so this area here would would easily
account for a vast majority of the
population of the entire state.
And they're the ones that are seeing
kind of the higher end of the heat
and you go into the North Texas area.
All of North Texas again tomorrow.
Likely you know,
likely going to have to be in the same
situation because if anything it's
just going to be just as hot if not hotter.
For some areas,
temps up to 105 heat index values up to 109,
so we have that you look at the temperatures.
Right now it is really hot.
In fact there I was gonna
say funny how that works.
I was gonna say the only area
that's not 100 degrees on this map
is Gainesville and it just clicked
up to 100 at this hour, 102 in Dallas,
102 in McKinney, 104 in Terrell.
So you see, it's between 100 and 105 across
all of North Texas and heat index values.
Pretty close you go.
You got to broaden out to a wide
view here of the state of Texas.
102 San Antonio and Austin 102.
VFW,
one of three Waco Houston's at 100 degrees,
Wichita Falls 103 Abilene, 104.
So yeah,
the core of the heat sitting pretty much
right on top of the state of Texas,
and if we go to the airport high today,
is actually now we go back.
102 is the temperature now that
was the high so far today.
That's likely to change the
records 107 set back in 1998,
so another little bit of
information on this heat.
This is the 20th day this year
that we've had triple digit heat.
In a given summer,
we average 20 triple digit days
and we've already hit that average
anything on top of today is above
average and this is our 11th
consecutive triple digit day,
so it's been a really long and hot
stretch of weather that we've had.
And of course,
that has Texans using lots of power.
We're going to get up to aerial placencia.
She's been tracking the latest on
the ERCOT demand and supply aerial.
What are we finding today?
Well, Jesse, we are one hour into
that conservation alert, right?
As you mentioned,
Orchard asking Texans to conserve
that energy from now until 9:00 PM.
This is actually the second time
they've asked us to do this.
This week we were asked to do it
on Monday from 2:00 to 8:00 PM.
So for one hour shorter and let me
actually just pause for one quick second.
We say ERCOT a lot.
We throw that name around.
That is the Electric Reliability
Council of Texas and so they operate
the state's power grid, right?
They move energy around the state.
They make sure that everybody's got
the electricity that they need,
and so when you have hot days like today
or really cold ones like last year.
We look to Irkutsk data and graphs to see
how we're doing and where things stand right.
So let's take a look at this
supply and demand graph right here.
This blue line is going to be the demand.
What we need the purple capacity,
and so obviously you want plenty of
space in between the two of them, right?
You want to make sure you have
more than you need.
You always want that purple
line above the blue line.
That's where we've been all day.
But this graph updates in real time, right?
So at three O 3,
we're right here at this vertical Gray line.
Notice how close these two lines have gotten,
which is different,
right than where we were.
Earlier this morning,
more space.
It's slowly gotten smaller and the
concern is when you look forward
to the afternoon and the evening
you will see the demand that blue
line is actually above the purple.
This fat purple line is that forecasted
range of capacity and there are
some serious overlap and they get
pretty close as the night goes on.
Now let me say this on Monday I
was looking at the same graph,
keeping an eye on it and at this time
there were certainly some similarities,
right?
Like I saw the graph kind of have
some crisscross and some overlapping,
but this gap.
What you see here today,
the demand over the capacity.
This is much larger today than
it was on Monday.
And so, as I mentioned,
ARCOTT has asked Texans to please reduce
their power again from now until 9:00 PM.
We are under that conservation alert.
Normally this graph is all green
under normal conditions and
it's all the way filled in.
It is yellow currently, because again,
we were under that conservation alert.
Take a look at this number right here.
Operating reserves.
We are at 2600 megawatts.
If this number gets below.
1000,
under certain circumstances,
that's when we could see some
of those controlled outages,
so that's certainly a number that we're
going to be watching here as well.
One more thing I want to know.
I know we're walking through a
lot of numbers,
so make sure they're doing
this slowly on Monday when
they have that conservation alert.
ERCOT said that right when that
alert started right around 2:00 PM,
they saw a 500 MW load drop off, right?
And that helped them kind of make
sure that we were all good, right?
Once they had that,
we saw this graph on Monday,
kind of separate and work its
way out the purple. Is a bubble.
We didn't have any problems on Monday,
so that's certainly the hope here.
Arcott said that on Monday that 500
megawatts that was a mix of you know
Texans cranking the thermostat up to 79,
not using those appliances as well
as those utility companies that have
arrangements with small businesses
and residents to sort of reduce the
customer use under situations like this.
So Jesse,
that's certainly the hope that this
conservation alert is going to work,
but these numbers and these graphs
are certainly something that I'm
going to be keeping a close eye
throughout the rest of the evening,
Ariel. Thanks, you know one thing I
wonder and something that maybe we
consider even talking to ERCOT about.
You know our lows.
Lately Ariel have have not really
dropped below 8182 degrees,
so even at the night time,
even though of course you know we get
a little bit of relief from the usage,
I wonder if they're not able to
store quite as much as as normal.
They're still using a lot
more than they normally would,
because even at night it's still very warm.
That's a really good point.
Jesse and you know I was talking to Arcott
earlier today and and weather obviously
has played a big role in this, right?
And so they were saying that some of
the issues for what we're seeing today,
Arcott says, is that there is
some cloud cover over in West TX,
and so that's obviously not helping
the solar panel panel situation.
We have low wind at this point.
That's what it's telling me,
and so that's affecting this problem.
And then you have some of those
thermal outages that are down,
and so all of these things that
play in addition to those hot
temperatures and those not very low
lows that you were talking about,
it's kind of creating this perfect storm.
Aerial thank you so much and I don't
want to be the bearer of bad news,
but you know, we look long range.
We have a 10 day forecast.
If I bring this out 14 days 21 days we
look longer than this and we can get at
least a general idea of what to expect.
Of course, this is our exact forecast here.
We have highs above 100 degrees over
the next 10 days beyond the 10 day.
I really don't see this pattern
breaking down anytime soon,
so it's something that we're going
to have to hold in place for because
in the rain chances are down too.
Tomorrow maybe we see a spotty
shower or thunderstorm and that's it.
But then you look beyond that.
Lows don't get below 80 degrees.
Highs stay 100 or better,
so we will continue to watch the
situation with ERCOT the demand,
the supply that we have Ariel
is going to be on top of that.
Join us at 4:00 o'clock on news 8456 and 10.
We'll have the very latest for you then.
In the meantime,
thank you very much for joining
us on this special cut.