Extreme Texas heat puts pressure on the power grid. Would delaying the school year help?

Texas Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, shared a potential legislative proposal last week to delay the start of the school year until after Labor Day.

In a post to his account on X, formerly known as Twitter, Patterson said opening school before Labor Day — which falls on the first Monday of September — is an "awfully wasteful stress" on the state's power grid.

"Cooling thousands of buildings - often the largest buildings in a community - during the hottest months of the year makes no sense," Patterson said in an Aug. 25 post. "Schools should be completely closed during July & August, saving taxpayer dollars on cooling expenses and our grid at the same time."

But energy experts say the answer isn’t that simple.

What causes stress on the Texas power grid?

The Texas power grid has been under scrutiny since Winter Storm Uri in 2021, which left millions of Texans without power and resulted in an estimated 246 deaths.

There are multiple factors that have contributed to the grid's instability, but one of the main reasons is due to supply and demand. Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president of energy and innovation at the University of Houston, said the demand for electricity has grown while the supply has not kept up.

"From 2007 to 2023, over that 16-year period, our annual consumption of electricity within the ERCOT market has grown by 50%," Krishnamoorti said. "That's a huge increase in the demand for electricity. And at the same time, the population of the state's gone from about close to 24 million to about 30, 30-plus million."

Even since the freeze in 2021, the state has not added to its portfolio of coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants despite the increasing population, according to UH energy fellow Ed Hirs.

Energy providers get paid as they supply energy to the grid on a given day. Hirs said power plants held in reserve don't get paid, which can make it difficult to count on them being operational when needed like in 2021.

"This is an engineering problem. And with a growing population, more volatile weather patterns, and no incentives for investment, we are going to be in trouble, or as I say, playing ERCOT weather roulette for the next several years," Hirs said.

Krishnamoorti said the most stress is put on the grid around sundown, when renewable energy production goes down. Currently the state does not have enough short-term grid storage to kick in and deliver power, he said, so the grid gets close to total demand around that time.

"That's when everybody's got their AC cranked up, the commercial activities are going, you got manufacturing still going. Everybody's working fully," he said. "So your load is very, very high there and all our variable renewable energy drops off then."

Would delaying the school year reduce pressure on Texas power grid?

Both Hirs and Krishnamoorti agree a late start to the school year would not have a major impact on grid demand.

Because peak demand is later in the evening — and the typical school day ends by 3 or 4 p.m. — starting the school year in September as opposed to August would probably not make a difference on the state's power stability.

Krishnamoorti said delaying the start of the school year is a "nice, catchy statement," but schools contribute to a very small portion of the demand. Additionally, the buildings are still generating power in the summer.

"Even if you are not in session in a school, you're not going to let the temperature drift way more than, say, over 80 degrees within that building because you start to run into all kinds of other issues with the maintenance of that building," he said.

Hirs said Patterson's proposal was an "overly simplistic bit of window dressing." Both he and Krishnamoorti agreed there were valid reasons for delaying the start of school due to the heat — but doing so would not contribute to power grid supply.

"I don't argue that it makes a lot of sense, maybe to push back the start of school just to keep kids from dying out on the practice fields," Hirs said. "But most of the buildings that he's complaining about, they already are air conditioned through the summer because you don't want the equipment in the buildings being exposed to hot temperatures."

The greatest number of consecutive 100 degree days in the Dallas-Fort Worth area typically happen from June through August, according to National Weather Service records. The summers of 2022 and 2023 were among the top ten for greatest consecutive 100 degree days.

"There's lots of good reasons to think about it from that perspective that we are getting hotter," Krishnamoorti said in regards to delaying the school year. "But energy and ERCOT's instability would not be the first reason that would come to my mind to ask for a change in the school year. Yes, you might help the ERCOT grid a little bit, but perhaps too little to really make a difference."

Copyright 2024 KERA