California, Texas Face Summer Power Shortage, Grid Watchdog Says

(Bloomberg) -- Power companies are shutting so many generating plants in Texas and California that the two most populous U.S. states may struggle to keep the lights on this summer.

Texas is facing a generation shortfall in part because there are 5,000 megawatts of power plants that have been retired in the past year, according to a report Wednesday from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., or NERC, which oversees reliability on the grid. That’s enough to power about 1 million Texas homes.

Meanwhile, California faces a “significant risk” of not having enough power reserves on hand related in part to the retirement of 789 megawatts of natural gas generation. That’s exacerbated by low snowpack that will reduce the amount of available hydropower, as well as restrictions on gas supplies in Southern California due to massive leaks at the Aliso Canyon storage facility that began in 2015.

“The sizable gap in generation resources for the 2018 Texas summer peak and the natural gas situation in California pose potential reliability concerns,” Thomas Coleman, NERC’s director of reliability assessments, said in a statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Chediak in San Francisco at mchediak@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Will Wade, Steve Stroth

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