Climate change is one of the factors shortening the window when aging Texas power plants can make necessary repairs to run at full strength in hot summer months.
Curt Terry, plant manager at Vistra Corp.’s Midlothian power plant, gave a media tour in October to explain the weatherization process. Six Texas power plants failed unexpectedly on Friday as a heat wave hit the state., our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
“We had a scheduled major maintenance outage beginning Friday, May 13, but it was cancelled by ERCOT on May 12,” a Calpine spokesperson said in a statement, adding that May is a “shoulder month” during which power generators historically take power plants offline to do repairs and maintenance during cooler weather.
ERCOT’s public statement said that “six power generation facilities tripped offline resulting in the loss of approximately 2,900 MW of electricity” — enough to power more than 580,000 homes. “At this time, all reserve generation resources available are operating.” ERCOT approves planned maintenance requests from energy companies months and even years in advance because of the complexity of the work and the need to maintain a minimum level of generation capacity at all times.
Daniel Cohan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University, questioned how the power plants that have been forced to delay maintenance will perform when the worst of the Texas heat arrives this summer.
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