The Electric Reliability Council of Texas’s (ERCOT) forecast that the state’s electrical demand could soar to 150 gigawatts by 2030 is unrealistic, energy experts say.
Juan Arteaga, a senior analyst at Enverus, a company that recently published its own study on Texas’s energy demand, told the San Antonio Express-News that ERCOT’s numbers and motivations were questionable.
“These guys are not stupid,” Arteaga said. “They’re just using that number to push for either more funds or more infrastructure investment. They run the system. They know it’s unrealistic.”
ERCOT’s latest figures have stirred debate among Texas legislators, particularly during June hearings by the Texas House and Senate. The discussions have focused on whether the state should increase the $5 billion available in the Texas Energy Fund, which provides low-interest loans to support the construction of more natural gas plants.
However, ERCOT’s projections have drawn scrutiny. Texas law mandates the company to consider historical load and forecasted growth in its evaluations but recent changes also require it to consider speculative projects in its queue. Because of this. ERCOT’s predictions take into account proposed bitcoin and data center projects that might not be constructed in Texas.
“They just took anything and everything that at some point showed some interest to interconnect to ERCOT and they assume it will become reality,” Arteaga said. “That’s why the numbers are so ridiculously high.”
In particular, large-scale green hydrogen projects could be driving upwards ERCOT’s projections.
“We found there’s some developers that are just speculative,” he said. “They just put the project out to create a lot of hype, and then they sell it, and if they can’t sell it, then it never happens.”
Enverus, on its own, conducted a study to forecast the state’s energy demand by 2030, and it found Texas should need 93.5 gigawatts by that time – a lot less than ERCOT’s forecast.
Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, shares Arteaga’s skepticism. He acknowledged that having a forecast is useful but that it has limits.
“It’s useful in that it does give you locationally and directionally an idea of where the projects need to be built,” He told the Express-News. “It’s a good way of directing investment to certain areas, … but to take those projects and say ‘We need to build a certain amount of generation’ is another story.”
