With a punishing heat wave across Texas driving record high power demand, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas late Sunday sent out a request that Texans cut back on their energy use on Monday.
ERCOT, the state’s power grid operator, asked Texans to turn up their thermostats and postpone running major appliances between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Monday. ERCOT has also called on large electric customers to lower their electricity use. Nearly all industrial-scale Bitcoin miners in the state have shut off their machines in response to the call, representing over 1% of total grid capacity, Bloomberg News reported.
Total forecasted power demand is expected to surpass 79 gigawatts on Monday, ERCOT said — which would set another record. The previous record-high demand on the ERCOT grid during summer was 74.8 gigawatts, in August 2019.
