ERCOT supports energy plan for the Texas Valley

The McAllen Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and American Electric Power (AEP) held a meeting with Kip Fox, president of Electric Transmission Texas (ETT).

The meeting focused on informing various economic development corporations in Hidalgo County about the expansion and improvement of the electrical transmission network serving the Rio Grande Valley.

AEP and South Texas Electric Cooperative are the transmission service providers for the estimated $1.28 billion project . The cost would be shared by ERCOT 's 26 million customers statewide.

In an interview with Susie Flores, director of recruiting new businesses for the US at MEDC , she commented that what is planned for the future is to implement the necessary infrastructure that allows the placement of new towers, antennas and wiring to be able to connect high-altitude poles. strain; this plan will make electric transmission service much more reliable.

At this meeting, the economic development corporations of  Mcallen, Edinburg, Mission and Pharr, Texas were convened , to whom this initiative was reported in order to work directly with them on any project they have.

“MEDC is currently working with a company that will install a solar energy farm and an additional green hydrogen project, but they are looking for properties where they could install them ,” explained Susie Flores.

One of the conditions for choosing the property is that it must be close to these high voltage connections to put your solar farm. Flores mentioned that this is a project that is contemplated to start up in a period of two to five years.

"At the moment, if there is a project in one of the economic development corporations in the region, they will be able to support the installation of the wiring," Susie assured.

He added that there are lines that only support a certain amount of voltage and with the new lines that will be installed, the capacity to receive and send energy to solar farms will be expanded.

THE PROJECT

The Tier 1 plan for the Lower Rio Grande Valley system improvement project , submitted to ERCOT by American Electric Power (AEP), calls for the construction of three new substations and the installation of approximately 352 miles of dual-circuit transmission lines. 345 kilovolts (kV) connecting them. 

The Lower Rio Grande Valley relies heavily on three main 345 kV long-distance transmission lines that connect the region to the rest of the state's grid, although two of the lines, which run parallel to the coast from near Corpus Christi to the Valley, are susceptible to damage from tropical storms and hurricanes, according to ERCOT . 

Existing conventional generation capacity is limited and no additional conventional generation is planned, ERCOT noted in its report on the project.

Conventional generation refers to power plants fueled by natural gas or coal, for example, as opposed to renewable energy such as wind or solar generation.

"Historically, the LRGV area has experienced reliability challenges, especially during transmission and generation outages, including those associated with extreme weather events, to serve existing and projected electricity demand growth ," ERCOT said.

Electricity demand at the LRGV  " load center " is expected to increase, while the potential for high-use industrial customers to move into the area is another reason transmission service needs to be improved, according to the report, which noted that peak summer demand is expected to reach 3,200 and 3,300 megawatts (MW) by 2027 and 2030, respectively. 

One MW, which is equal to one million watts, is roughly the amount of energy needed to power 400 to 900 homes per year.

According to ERCOT , reliability issues will arise even without outages of 3,200 MW or more, meaning system upgrades will need to be in place by 2027. It is important to consider high-impact weather-related generation or transmission outages and stability and reliability issues. 

ERCOT said the large volume of renewable resources (wind and solar farms) that have been built in and around the Lower Valley in recent years limits the ability to import and export energy, affecting long-distance energy transfer between the Lower Valley and the rest of the ERCOT network. Wind and solar generation capacity in the Lower Valley was expected to reach approximately seven gigawatts by the end of 2021. One gigawatt equals 1 billion watts.

In addition to enhancing reliability and stability and optimizing system resiliency under high-impact weather conditions and increasing the ability to move power in and out of the area, the enhancements "will provide greater operational flexibility during planned maintenance outage conditions." ", according to ERCOT.