ERCOT Confirms That Rotating Outages "Not Likely"

ERCOT's latest Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy for the summer of 2012 confirms that, while Energy Emergency Alerts (EEA) are likely to be called on multiple occasions, "these EEA declarations are not likely to result in the need to institute rotating outages."

However, as ERCOT has cautioned previously, if a higher-than-normal number of forced generation outages occur during a period of high demand, or if record-breaking weather conditions similar to last summer lead to even higher-than-expected peak demands, the ERCOT system, "will likely have insufficient resources available to serve those demands." This insufficiency would result in the need for rotating outages to maintain the integrity of the system as a whole.

ERCOT expects to have 73,853 MW of generation resources available to serve summer needs, which includes the return of nearly 2,000 MW of mothballed capacity. This includes 430 MW of capacity that was not available last summer.

ERCOT's updated peak demand forecast is 67,492 MW.